Convert text to an array

March 6, 2023

please help.

The input text is

"['(', /[1-9]/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, ')', ' ', /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, '-', /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/]"

I want to convert to an array

['(', /[1-9]/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, ')', ' ' ', /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, '-', /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/]

it does not work, it adds quotes.

The split() method didn’t help, tried the flat() method, but maybe there is something else?

>Solution :

Javascript needs special instructions to handle the two types of string

You need to tell it to remove the ' characters, and to create a regular expression when it sees the / character.

This code should do what you want:

const s = "['(', /[1-9]/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, ')', ' ', /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, '-', /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/, /\d/]"

const out = s.slice(1, s.length - 1).split(", ").map(e => {
  if (e.startsWith("'")) {
    return e.slice(1, e.length - 1)
  }
  if (e.startsWith("/")) {
    return new RegExp(e.slice(1, e.length - 1))
  }
  throw new Error("Unexpected first character in element " + e)

})


console.log(out)