How to extract multiple strings from between special characters

Question

I have a problem with defining the correct regex.

I need to split the text into groups in such a way that I will have a group/array of digits that are inside braces and a group/array of text that is between those braces.

Example text:

{3} Lorem ipsum "dolor" sit amet, {2} consectetur adipiscing elit. {5}Sed semper; sollicitudin diam, "posuere" {3}aliquet massa pulvinar nec.

And I want to have two arrays:

1. [3,2,5,3]
2. ["Lorem ipsum "dolor" sit amet,", "consectetur adipiscing elit.", "Sed semper; sollicitudin diam, "posuere"", "aliquet massa pulvinar nec."]

And almost I made it, but I have a problem with special characters in a text (braces character is prohibited in input text). My present regex:

\{(.)\}+([\d\w\s]+)

And it returns:

1. ["{3} Lorem ipsum", "{2} consectetur adipiscing elit", "{5}Sed semper", "{3}aliquet massa pulvinar nec"]

I know that later I can split numbers from text using.split('}') substring and so one, on each array element (it won't be nice but it will work).

Answer 1

String.prototype.matchAll() returns an iterator of all matches and their capturing groups which you can then use to populate your seperate arrays.

 const s = `{3} Lorem ipsum "dolor" sit amet, {2} consectetur adipiscing elit. {5}Sed semper; sollicitudin diam, "posuere" {3}aliquet massa pulvinar nec.` const reg = /\{(\d+)\}(.*?)(?=\{|$)/g; const matches = s.matchAll(reg); const braces = [], text = []; for (const match of matches) { const [_, b, t] = match; braces.push(b); text.push(t); } console.log(braces); console.log(text);

Or mapped to an array of a shape of your choice.

 const s = `{3} Lorem ipsum "dolor" sit amet, {2} consectetur adipiscing elit. {5}Sed semper; sollicitudin diam, "posuere" {3}aliquet massa pulvinar nec.` const reg = /\{(\d+)\}(.*?)(?=\{|$)/g; const matches = Array.from(s.matchAll(reg), ([_, digit, text]) => ({digit, text})); console.log(matches);

Answer 2

This would do it:

 var text = `{3} Lorem ipsum "dolor" sit amet, {2} consectetur adipiscing elit. {5}Sed semper; sollicitudin diam, "posuere" {3}aliquet massa pulvinar nec.`; // regex for all digits encased in {} var regex = /\d+(?=\})/g; var nums = text.match(regex); // regex for everything not a digit encased in {} var regex = /[^}]+(?=\{|$)/g; var next_text = text.match(regex); console.log(nums); console.log(next_text);

Answer 3

You can use a similar regex and iterate each match, appending each captured group to the result array, like this:

let str = '{3} Lorem ipsum "dolor" sit amet, {2} consectetur adipiscing elit. {5}Sed semper; sollicitudin diam, "posuere" {3}aliquet massa pulvinar nec.'

let regex = /\{(.)\}([^{]+)/g

let match = regex.exec(str)
let arr1 = []
let arr2 = []
while(match != null){
    arr1.push(match[1])
    arr2.push(match[2])
    match = regex.exec(str)
}
console.log(arr1)
console.log(arr2)