Regex - Match sets of words

Question

In JavaScript, how would I get ['John Smith', 'Jane Doe'] from "John Smith - Jane Doe" where - can be any separator ( \\ / , + * : ; ) and so on, using regex ?
Using new RegExp('[a-zA-Z]+[^\\/|\\-|\\*|\\+]', 'g') will just give me ["John ", "Smith ", "Jane ", "Doe"]

Answer 1

Try this, no regex:

var arr = str.split(' - ')

Edit

Multiple separators:

var arr = str.split(/ [-*+,] /)

Answer 2

If you want to match multiple words, you need to have a space in your character class. I'd think something like /[ a-zA-Z]+/g would be a starting point, used repeatedly with exec or via String#match , like this: Live copy | source

var str = "John Smith - Jane Doe";
var index;
var matches = str.match(/[ a-zA-Z]+/g);
if (matches) {
  display("Found " + matches.length + ":");
  for (index = 0; index < matches.length; ++index) {
    display("[" + index + "]: " + matches[index]);
  }
}
else {
  display("No matches found");
}

But it's very limited, a huge number of names have characters other than AZ, you may want to invert your logic and use a negated class ( /[^...]/g , where ... is a list of possible delimiter characters). You don't want to leave "Elizabeth Peña" or "Gerard 't Hooft" out in the cold! :-)