put dash after every n character during input from keyboard

Question

$(\'.creditCardText\').keyup(function() {
  var foo = $(this).val().split(\"-\").join(\"\"); // remove hyphens
  if (foo.length > 0) {
    foo = foo.match(new RegExp(         


        

Answer 1

In this case, it is more convenient to just write normal code to solve the problem:

function format(input, format, sep) {
    var output = "";
    var idx = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < format.length && idx < input.length; i++) {
        output += input.substr(idx, format[i]);
        if (idx + format[i] < input.length) output += sep;
        idx += format[i];
    }

    output += input.substr(idx);

    return output;
}

Sample usage:

function format(input, format, sep) {
    var output = "";
    var idx = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < format.length && idx < input.length; i++) {
        output += input.substr(idx, format[i]);
        if (idx + format[i] < input.length) output += sep;
        idx += format[i];
    }

    output += input.substr(idx);

    return output;
}

$('.creditCardText').keyup(function() {
    var foo = $(this).val().replace(/-/g, ""); // remove hyphens
    // You may want to remove all non-digits here
    // var foo = $(this).val().replace(/\D/g, "");

    if (foo.length > 0) {
        foo = format(foo, [3, 2, 4, 3, 3], "-");
    }
  
    
    $(this).val(foo);
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<input class="creditCardText" />

While it is possible to do partial matching and capturing with regex, the replacement has to be done with a replacement function. In the replacment function, we need to determine how many capturing group actually captures some text. Since there is no clean solution with regex, I write a more general function as shown above.

Answer 2

Per further comments, the op clarified they need a fixed interval for when to insert dashes. In that case, there are several ways to implement it; I think regular expression would probably be the worst, in other words, overkill and overly complication solution.

Some simpler options would be to create a new character array, and in a loop append character by character, adding a dash too every time you get to the index you want. This would probably be the easiest to write and grok after the fact, but a little more verbose.

Or you could convert to a character array and use an 'insert into array at index'-type function like splice() (see Insert Item into Array at a Specific Index or Inserting string at position x of another string for some examples).

Answer 3

You can split it using a regular expression. In this case, I'm using a expression to check for non-spaces with interval 3-2-4-3.

The RegExp.exec will return with a "match" array, with the first element containing the actual string. After removing the first element of the match, you can then join them up with dashes.

var mystring = "123121234123"
var myRegexp = /^([^\s]{3})([^\s]{2})([^\s]{4})([^\s]{3})$/g
var match = myRegexp.exec(mystring);
if (match)
{
    match.shift();
    mystring = match.join("-")
    console.log(mystring)
}