How can you include the delimiter in a .split string in dart?

I have a String as follows:

var _quotedText = "Text1[John;1234]Text2";

Which I want to split into a list as follows:

final List<String> _splitQuotedText = _quotedText.split(RegExp(r"\[([A-z].+);([0-9]+)\]"));

My list comes out as:

['Text1', 'Text2']

But I’d like it to actually comes out as:

['Text1', '[John;1234]Text2']

Meaning the delimiter should be included with the match, and ideally the delimiter would be considered the "start" for a given item.

Is there any kind of straightforward way to tackle this?

>Solution :

A simple way to do this is to use regex’s lookahead function.

A lookahead will match whatever is before your lookahead, we can use it to match the space before your delimiter and use that as a delimiter:

A lookahead looks like this:

(?= ... )

So your new regex looks like this:

(?=\[([A-z].+);([0-9]+)\])

Here is your example:

void main() {
  var myString = "Text1[John;1234]Text2";
  List<String> myList = myString.split(RegExp(r"(?=\[([A-z].+);([0-9]+)\])"));

  print(myList); // ['Text1', '[John;1234]Text2']
}