JS regex to split by line

javascript regex newline
JoJo picture JoJo · Feb 17, 2011 · Viewed 95.8k times · Source

How do you split a long piece of text into separate lines? Why does this return line1 twice?

/^(.*?)$/mg.exec('line1\r\nline2\r\n');

["line1", "line1"]

I turned on the multi-line modifier to make ^ and $ match beginning and end of lines. I also turned on the global modifier to capture all lines.

I wish to use a regex split and not String.split because I'll be dealing with both Linux \n and Windows \r\n line endings.

Answer

ReactiveRaven picture ReactiveRaven · Feb 17, 2011 
arrayOfLines = lineString.match(/[^\r\n]+/g);

As Tim said, it is both the entire match and capture. It appears regex.exec(string) returns on finding the first match regardless of global modifier, wheras string.match(regex) is honouring global.

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