How can I split a string into segments of n characters?

Solution 1:

var str = 'abcdefghijkl';
console.log(str.match(/.{1,3}/g));

Note: Use {1,3} instead of just {3} to include the remainder for string lengths that aren't a multiple of 3, e.g:

console.log("abcd".match(/.{1,3}/g)); // ["abc", "d"]

A couple more subtleties:

If your string may contain newlines (which you want to count as a character rather than splitting the string), then the . won't capture those. Use /[\s\S]{1,3}/ instead. (Thanks @Mike).
If your string is empty, then match() will return null when you may be expecting an empty array. Protect against this by appending || [].

So you may end up with:

var str = 'abcdef \t\r\nghijkl';
var parts = str.match(/[\s\S]{1,3}/g) || [];
console.log(parts);

console.log(''.match(/[\s\S]{1,3}/g) || []);

Solution 2:

If you didn't want to use a regular expression...

var chunks = [];

for (var i = 0, charsLength = str.length; i < charsLength; i += 3) {
    chunks.push(str.substring(i, i + 3));
}

jsFiddle.

...otherwise the regex solution is pretty good :)

Solution 3:

str.match(/.{3}/g); // => ['abc', 'def', 'ghi', 'jkl']

Solution 4:

Building on the previous answers to this question; the following function will split a string (str) n-number (size) of characters.

function chunk(str, size) {
    return str.match(new RegExp('.{1,' + size + '}', 'g'));
}

Demo

(function() {
  function chunk(str, size) {
    return str.match(new RegExp('.{1,' + size + '}', 'g'));
  }
  
  var str = 'HELLO WORLD';
  println('Simple binary representation:');
  println(chunk(textToBin(str), 8).join('\n'));
  println('\nNow for something crazy:');
  println(chunk(textToHex(str, 4), 8).map(function(h) { return '0x' + h }).join('  '));
  
  // Utiliy functions, you can ignore these.
  function textToBin(text) { return textToBase(text, 2, 8); }
  function textToHex(t, w) { return pad(textToBase(t,16,2), roundUp(t.length, w)*2, '00'); }
  function pad(val, len, chr) { return (repeat(chr, len) + val).slice(-len); }
  function print(text) { document.getElementById('out').innerHTML += (text || ''); }
  function println(text) { print((text || '') + '\n'); }
  function repeat(chr, n) { return new Array(n + 1).join(chr); }
  function textToBase(text, radix, n) {
    return text.split('').reduce(function(result, chr) {
      return result + pad(chr.charCodeAt(0).toString(radix), n, '0');
    }, '');
  }
  function roundUp(numToRound, multiple) { 
    if (multiple === 0) return numToRound;
    var remainder = numToRound % multiple;
    return remainder === 0 ? numToRound : numToRound + multiple - remainder;
  }
}());

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