Javascript: Convert textarea into an array

var stringArray = document.getElementById('textarea').value.split('\n');

Cross-platform way:

var area = document.getElementById("area");             
var lines = area.value.replace(/\r\n/g,"\n").split("\n");

I like the "cross-platform way" answer best (https://stackoverflow.com/a/32240738/34806) as I've grappled with input from a Mac in the past. Nevertheless I think most of the existing answers could benefit from an additional step.

Specifically, what if some lines are empty? The following will filter out such lines so that we wind up with a "compact" array rather than a "sparse" one (or at least, rather than one with elements containing no values)

var area = document.getElementById("area");             
var lines = area.value.replace(/\r\n/g,"\n").split("\n").filter(line => line);

This should work (tested in Firefox and Google Chrome):

var arrayOfLines = $('#textAreaID').val().split('\n');