Javascript and regex: split string and keep the separator

Question

I have a string:

var string = \"aaaaaa
† bbbb
‡ cccc\"

And I would like to split this string w

Answer 1

If you wrap the delimiter in parantheses it will be part of the returned array.

string.split(/(
&#?[a-zA-Z0-9]+);/g);
// returns ["aaaaaa", "
†", "bbbb", "
‡", "cccc"]

Depending on which part you want to keep change which subgroup you match

string.split(/(
)&#?[a-zA-Z0-9]+;/g);
// returns ["aaaaaa", "
", "bbbb", "
", "cccc"]

You could improve the expression by ignoring the case of letters string.split(/()&#?[a-z0-9]+;/gi);

And you can match for predefined groups like this: \d equals [0-9] and \w equals [a-zA-Z0-9_]. This means your expression could look like this.

string.split(/
(&#?[a-z\d]+;)/gi);

There is a good Regular Expression Reference on JavaScriptKit.