CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
Conor O'Brien
Conor O'Brien

Reputation: 1037

RegExp for the matching of a repeated character

I need a regular expression (or any other thing) object that will match a character, and multiple instances of the same character following that, until it reaches a new character.

Ideally, I need a function that would return an array of all the consecutive characters found in the input string. It should return something like this.

> like_characters("Hello?");
Array ["H", "e", "ll", "o", "?"]
> like_characters("1234442332111???");
Array ["1", "2", "3", "444", "2", "33", "2", "111", "???"]

I don't have to use a regular expression--any way of "splitting" a string by a character change would work. It preferably would be a low-byte code, as I am working on a group project with a limited amount of space.

Attempts

str.split(/\d*/)
str.split(/\d+/)
/(\d)+\1/

This is pretty much all I've got (and frankly, I'm surprised I even got this far--the realm of the regular expression is so murky).

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1106

Answers (2)

maerics
maerics

Reputation: 156662

function splitWithRepeats(str) {
  return str.match(/(.)\1*/g);
}

splitWithRepeats('Hello!'); // => ["H", "e", "ll", "o", "!"]
splitWithRepeats('Heeeelllllloooooo!'); // => ["H", "eeee", "llllll", "oooooo", "!"]

Upvotes: 2

zerkms
zerkms

Reputation: 255155

The regex would be as easy as

.match(/(.)\1*/g)

What it does - it matches a character and any number (including zero) of the same characters followed.

"Hello?".match(/(.)\1*/g)
// ["H", "e", "ll", "o", "?"]

Upvotes: 5

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