How do I split a string by whitespace and ignoring leading and trailing whitespace into an array of words using a regular expression?
If you are more interested in the bits that are not whitespace, you can match the non-whitespace instead of splitting on whitespace.
" The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ".match(/\S+/g);
Note that the following returns null:
" ".match(/\S+/g)
So the best pattern to learn is:
str.match(/\S+/g) || []
" The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ".trim().split(/\s+/);
Instead of splitting at whitespace sequences, you could match any non-whitespace sequences:
" The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ".match(/\S+/g)