JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

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String.split() Method

Name

String.split() Method---break a string into an array of strings

Availability

Navigator 3.0

Synopsis

string.split();
string.split(delimiter);

Arguments

delimiter

The character or string at which the string will be split. If no delimiter is specified, then the returned array has only one element, the string itself.

Returns

An array of strings, created by splitting string into substrings, at delimiter boundaries.

Description

The split() method creates and returns an array of substrings of the specified string. These substrings are created by splitting the string at every occurrence of the specified delimiter. The delimiter character or characters are not part of the returned substrings.

If no delimiter is specified, then the string is not split at all, and the returned array contains only a single, unbroken string element.

Unfortunately, there is no way to specify more than one delimiter string or character to use. For example, there is no way to tell it to treat any of the space, newline and tab characters as delimiters.

Note that the String.split() method is the inverse of the Array.join() method.

Example

The split() method is most useful when you are working with highly structured strings. For example:

s = "1,2,3,4,5"
a = s.split(",");

Another common use of the split() method is to parse commands and similar strings by breaking them down into words delimited by spaces:

words = sentence.split(' ');

See Also

"Array.join()", "String"


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