JQuery split string separator either space, ( or )

Question

How do I split a string with multiple separators. (JQuery)

var mystring = "(this is my string!)";

I have tried

var words = mystring.split(/[\s(!)]/);

but it does not work

I wanted to have words (array) content to be
[ ( , this , is , my , string , ! , ) ]

Appreciate all the help. Thanks

Answer 1

split on the characters you choose, and filter the array to remove values that are empty or just spaces (if you don't want them for some reason) ?

var words = (mystring.split(/(\s+|\(|\)|\!)/)).filter(function(n) {return n.trim()});

// returns
// ["(", "this", "is", "my", "string", "!", ")"] 

FIDDLE

Answer 2

You could do something like this:

mystring.replace( '(', '( ' ).replace( ')', ' )' ).split( ' ' );

However, it really depends on what pattern you expect your input to match. You need to ask yourself questions like, does all of my input start and end with parenthesis? etc...