The code you linked didn't work mainly because it's using a different programming language to javascript. In theory, it should work, but javascript does not support regular expression lookbehinds (at this present time)..
Instead, I have re-wrote that fragment of code:
prepareQuery: function (val) {
function isNotLetter(a){
return (/[0-9-_ ]/.test(a));
}
var val=val.toLowerCase().split("");
var tempArray=val.join("").split("");
var currentIndex=1;
for (var i=0;i<val.length-1;i++){
if (isNotLetter(val[i]) !== isNotLetter(val[i+1])){
tempArray.splice(i+currentIndex, 0, " ");
currentIndex++;
}
}
return tempArray.join("");
}
Since you're new to javascript, I'm going to explain what it does.
- It declares a function in
prepareQuery
to check whether or not a string contains a letter [this can be moved somewhere else] - It then splits
val
into an array and copies the content ofval
intotempArray
- An index is declared (explained later)
- A loop is made, which goes through every single character in
val
- The
if
statement detects whether or not the current character (val[i]
as set by the loop) is the same as the character next to it (val[i+1]
). - IF either one are different to the other (ie the current character is a letter while the next isn't) then a space is added to the
tempArray
at that "index" - The index is incremented and used as an offset in #6
- The loop finishes, joins the "array" into a string and outputs the result.
DEMO: http://jsbin.com/ebitus/1/edit (JSFiddle was down....)
EDIT: Sorry, but I completely misinterpreted your question... You failed to mention that you were using "quicksearch" and jQuery. In that case I'm assuming that you have a list of elements that have names and you want to search through them with the plugin... A much easier way to match the user's query (if there is no space) is to strip the space from the search table along with the query itself - though original reverse method will work (just not as efficiently) [aka: expanding the user's query]
In this case, stripping the space from both the search table and user input would be a better method
prepareQuery: function (val) {
return val.toLowerCase().replace(/ /ig,'').split(" ");
},
testQuery: function (query, txt, _row) {
txt=txt.toLowerCase().replace(/ /ig,'');
for (var i = 0; i < query.length; i += 1) {
if (txt.indexOf(query[i]) === -1) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/q9k9Y/3/
Edit 2:
It seems like your real intent is to create a fully functioning search feature on your website, not to just add spaces between letters and numbers. With this, I suggest using Quicksilver. I would love to work out an algorithm to extend quickSearcher but at the current time I cannot (timezones). Instead, I suggest using Quicksilver