Splitting by one value or another seems to be a pretty common use case if
Stack Overflow questions and personal experience are an indication. For
example "-" and " " and "/".
Currently, the solution is to pass a regular expression to
String.prototype.split .
However, it would be nice to be able to pass variable arguments to the
method.
So if I want to split strings like "0-12-12" and "321+32/14" or "TI-CK ER"
instead of having to do:
```
myString.split(/ |-|\/|\+/g); // this is no fun to read
myString.split(" ","-","/","+"); // this is easier
myString.split([" ","-","/","+"]); // this is also easier.
```
The advantage of the second one (accepting an Array) is that it does not
require additional handling of the second "limit" parameter.
A possible advantage of the first one is that it's simpler.
The algorithm for the second one could be quite simple, in 21.1.3.17 only
_SplitMatch_ needs to be updated, and implementation sounds pretty simple
in engines and the semantics simple in the spec.
Some other languages:
- C# accepts an array of `char` or array of "string" in its Split,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tabh47cf.aspx
- Ruby doesn't do this with `.split`, behaves like JS
http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.0.0/String.html#method-i-split
- Java String.split only accepts a regex
- Python doesn't do this with `.split`
Advantages:
- Nice api addition that solves a common use case.
- A way to split by multiple delimiters easily without knowledge of
regular expressions.
- Does not break the existing API, especially if we use array syntax.
Disadvantages
- Extra overhead
- Use case needs assertion
(Reminds me of stuff in string_extras
http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:string_extras )
What do you think?
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