How do I split a string by whitespace and ignoring leading and trailing whitespace into an array of words using a regular expression?

Question

I typically use the following code in JavaScript to split a string by whitespace.

\"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.\".split(/\\s+/);
// [\"The\"         


        

Answer 1

Instead of splitting at whitespace sequences, you could match any non-whitespace sequences:

"  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ".match(/\S+/g)

Answer 2

If you are more interested in the bits that are not whitespace, you can match the non-whitespace instead of splitting on whitespace.

"  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ".match(/\S+/g);

Note that the following returns null:

"   ".match(/\S+/g)

So the best pattern to learn is:

str.match(/\S+/g) || []

Answer 3

Not elegant as others code but very easy to understand:

    countWords(valOf)
    {
        newArr[];
        let str = valOf;
        let arr = str.split(" ");

        for (let index = 0; index < arr.length; index++) 
       {
           const element = arr[index];
           if(element)
           {
              newArr.push(element);
           }
       }
       const NumberOfWords = newArr.length;

       return NumberOfWords;
   }

Answer 4

" The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ".trim().split(/\s+/);