Using JavaScript regex to split text by line breaks

What is the best way to split a long string of text into individual lines? And why does this code snippet return "line1" twice?

/^(.*?)$/mg.exec('line1\r\nline2\r\n');

["line1", "line1"]

By enabling the multi-line modifier, I made sure that the ^ and $ characters match the beginning and end of each line. The global modifier was also turned on so that all lines are captured.

The reason for using a regex split instead of String.split is because I need to account for both Linux (\n) and Windows (\r\n) line endings.

Answer №1

lineArray = lineString.match(/[^\r\n]+/g);

In agreement with Tim's explanation, the result includes both the entire match and capture. It seems that regex.exec(string) stops after finding the first match even without the global modifier, while string.match(regex) respects the global modifier.

Answer №2

Utilize

outcome = subject.split(/\r?\n/);

The regular expression provided results in the duplication of line1 as it is both the complete match and the content within the initial capturing group.

Answer №3

I believe the following characters are considered as newlines:

  1. \r followed by \n
  2. \n followed by \r
  3. \n present alone
  4. \r present alone

To process this, you can use

var re=/\r\n|\n\r|\n|\r/g;

arrayofLines=lineString.replace(re,"\n").split("\n");

to get an array of all lines, including the empty ones.

OR

You can also use

arrayOfLines = lineString.match(/[^\r\n]+/g); 

to get an array of non-empty lines only.

Answer №4

A more advanced regular expression that can effectively handle various line ending combinations, even when mixed in the same file, while also eliminating empty lines:

let content = text.split(/[\r\n]+/g);

For better cleanliness, use this regex with whitespace trimming:

let content = text.trim().split(/\s*[\r\n]+\s*/g);

Answer №5

Unicode Guidelines for Line Breaks

Guidelines outlined in Unicode® Technical Standard #18 specify the rules for defining line boundaries. Within that section, a regular expression is provided to identify all line boundaries. By utilizing this regex, we can create a JavaScript function that effectively splits a given string at any line boundary, including empty lines and maintaining leading and trailing whitespace:

const splitLines = s => s.split(/\r\n|(?!\r\n)[\n-\r\x85\u2028\u2029]/)

The necessity of the negative look-ahead portion ((?!\r\n)) may not be immediately clear, but it is advised within the Unicode document 🤷‍♂️.

In the aforementioned document, there is a recommendation to establish a meta-character within a regular expression for identifying all line ending characters and sequences. Perl utilizes \R for this purpose. Regrettably, JavaScript does not currently feature such a meta-character. Despite this, there doesn't appear to be a TC39 proposal addressing this deficiency as of now.

Answer №6

Begin by replacing every occurrence of \r\n with \n, and after that use the String.split method.

Answer №7

http://example.com/yhn98fj/

const textLines = text.match(/^.*((\r\n|\n|\r)|$)/gm);

I implemented a similar approach. You can find my code in the provided link above.

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