Splitting string by whitespace, without empty elements?

Question

I am trying to explode an string using javascript to pick searchterms, whitespace-separated. However I get empty array elements if a searchterm is ended by a whitespace, as

Answer 1

If you want a function that you can use, just extend String:

 String.prototype.splitNoSpaces = function(){
     return this.split(' ').filter(function(i){return i});
 };

 //Now use it!
 var classString = "class1    class2 class3    class4";
 var classArray = classString.splitNoSpaces();

 //classArray[0] is class1
 //classArray[1] is class2
 //classArray[2] is class3
 //classArray[3] is class4

Thanks to @user1079877 for the hint

Answer 2

This is a bit old, but for documentation purposes there is also another neat way.

someString.filter(Boolean);

// Example
['fds', '', 'aaaaa', 'AA', 'ffDs', "", 'd'].filter(Boolean);
// Output
["fds", "aaaaa", "AA", "ffDs", "d"]

Answer 3

No matter what splitter this always works:

str.split(' ').filter(function(i){return i})
// With ES6
str.split(' ').filter(i => i)

Filter logic also can change in some other cases.

Answer 4

You could simply match all non-space character sequences:

str.match(/[^ ]+/g)

Answer 5

Add function:

//Some browsers support trim so we check for that first
if(!String.prototype.trim) {  
  String.prototype.trim = function () {  
    return this.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,'');  
  };  
}

Then call trim on the string:

var strb = "searchterm1 "; // Note the ending whitespace
console.log(strb.trim().split(" ")); // ["searchterm1"]