javascript

CHAPTER 2 ■ TYPE CONVERSION
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Figure 2–15. Splitting a string into smaller strings with split()
Say the final villain is prefaced by ", and " rather than ", ". That is to say, we want to divvy up a
string based on two dividers, ", " or ", and ". This can’t be done by passing a string divider. Rather,
we’d need to pass in a RegExp literal to match both dividers:
/, (?:and )?/g
Don’t worry, this won’t look like gobbledygook by the end of Chapter 5 (note how you can identify
the dividers in the expression, and we’re using /g again). Try the following sample in Firebug, verifying
your work with Figure 2–16:
var villains = "Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Venom, Hobgoblin, and Sandman";
villains.split(/, (?:and )?/g);
// ["Green Goblin", "Doctor Octopus", "Venom", "Hobgoblin", "Sandman"]