Split string with a single occurence (not twice) of a delimiter in Javascript

Question

This is better explained with an example. I want to achieve an split like this:

two-separate-tokens-this--is--just--one--token-another

->

Answer 1

@Ωmega has the right idea in using match instead of split, but his regex is more complicated than it needs to be. Try this one:

s.match(/[^-]+(?:--[^-]+)*/g);

It reads exactly the way you expect it to work: Consume one or more non-hyphens, and if you encounter a double hyphen, consume that and go on consuming non-hyphens. Repeat as necessary.

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EDIT: Apparently the source string may contain runs of two or more consecutive hyphens, which should not be treated as delimiters. That can be handled by adding a + to the second hyphen:

s.match(/[^-]+(?:--+[^-]+)*/g);

You can also use a {min,max} quantifier:

s.match(/[^-]+(?:-{2,}[^-]+)*/g);