Split a string only the at the first n occurrences of a delimiter

Question

I\'d like to split a string only the at the first n occurrences of a delimiter. I know, I could add them together using a loop, but isn\'t there a more straight forward appr

Answer 1

Improved version of a sane limit implementation with proper RegEx support:

function splitWithTail(value, separator, limit) {
    var pattern, startIndex, m, parts = [];

    if(!limit) {
        return value.split(separator);
    }

    if(separator instanceof RegExp) {
        pattern = new RegExp(separator.source, 'g' + (separator.ignoreCase ? 'i' : '') + (separator.multiline ? 'm' : ''));
    } else {
        pattern = new RegExp(separator.replace(/([.*+?^${}()|\[\]\/\\])/g, '\\$1'), 'g');
    }

    do {
        startIndex = pattern.lastIndex;
        if(m = pattern.exec(value)) {
            parts.push(value.substr(startIndex, m.index - startIndex));
        }
    } while(m && parts.length < limit - 1);
    parts.push(value.substr(pattern.lastIndex));

    return parts;
}

Usage example:

splitWithTail("foo, bar, baz", /,\s+/, 2); // -> ["foo", "bar, baz"]

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