Difference between .split(/\s+/) and .split(“ ”)?

Question

:) First of all, sorry my bady english :p I was taking a look to the next js code fragment:

var classes = element.className.split(/\\s+/);

That c

Answer 1

\s captures more types of whitespace than space

From https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions:

Matches a single white space character, including space, tab, form feed, line feed. Equivalent to [ \f\n\r\t\v​\u00a0\u1680​\u180e\u2000​\u2001\u2002​\u2003\u2004​\u2005\u2006​\u2007\u2008​\u2009\u200a​\u2028\u2029​​\u202f\u205f​\u3000].

Also the + means it will match on multiple spaces. So foo bar will produce a different result:

js> 'foo      bar'.split(' ')
["foo", "", "", "", "", "", "bar"]
js> 'foo      bar'.split(/\s+/)
["foo", "bar"]

Answer 2

The difference between .split(" ") and .split(/\s+/) is:

The regex " "

• Match the space character literally.

The regex /\s+/

• Match a single whitespacecharacter (tab, line feed, carriage return, vertical tab, form feed) between one and unlimmited times. (greedy)

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Short:

" "   splits the array at one single space character.
/\s/ splits the array at every kind of whitespace character
+      Matches between one and unlimitted times

Answer 3

No, .split(/\s+/), and .split(" ") are different ones. \s+ matches one or more space characters including line breaks where " " matches a single horizontal space character. So .split(/\s+/) splits the input according to one or more space characters and .split(" ") splits the input according to a single space.

Example:

> "foo   bar".split(/\s+/)
[ 'foo', 'bar' ]
> "foo   bar".split(" ")
[ 'foo', '', '', 'bar' ]