Split the sentences by ',' and remove surrounding spaces
Short answer: Use m = s.match(/[^ ,]/g);
Your RE doesn't work as expected, because the last group matches the most recent match (=
c). If you omit {1,}$, the returned match will be " a , b ", "a", "b". In short, your RegExp does return as much matches as specified groups unless you use a global flag /g. In this case, the returned list hold references to all matched substrings.
To achieve your effect, use:
m = s.replace(/\s*(,|^|$)\s*/g, "$1");
This replace replaces every comma (,), beginning (^) and end ($), surrounded by whitespace, by the original character (comma, or nothing).
If you want to get an array, use:
m = s.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,"").split(/\s*,\s*/);
This RE trims the string (removes all whitespace at the beginning and end, then splits the string by <any whitespace>,<any whitespace>. Note that white-space characters also include newlines and tabs. If you want to stick to spaces-only, use a space () instead of \s.
Here's a pretty simple & straightforward way to do this without needing a complex regular expression.
var str = " a , b , c "
var arr = str.split(",").map(function(item) {
return item.trim();
});
//arr = ["a", "b", "c"]
The native .map is supported on IE9 and up: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/map
Or in ES6+ it gets even shorter:
var arr = str.split(",").map(item => item.trim());
And for completion, here it is in Typescript with typing information
var arr: string[] = str.split(",").map((item: string) => item.trim());
You can try this without complex regular expressions.
var arr = " a , b , c ".trim().split(/\s*,\s*/);
console.log(arr);ES6 shorthand:
str.split(',').map(item=>item.trim())