convert string to array in Javascript?

Question

I have a string

var str = '[SYSTEM, Test, check]'

I want to convert this String into array in order to access these values separately., like..

var array = ['SYSTEM', 'Test', 'check'];

Answer 1

You can do that by removing the beginning and end brackets and then splitting the string by ', '.

var array = str.replace(/\[|\]/g,'').split(', ');

This uses a regex to remove the brackets and than the split method to make the array

To elaborate a little more... I use /[|]/ to look for instances of [ and ]. I flag the regex as global (the g) in order to find all instances of it. Then I replace the instances with an empty string. Once all the instances have been removed, I split the string into an array based off of a comma and space seperator ', '

UPDATE:

As per the comments, you should check for the brackets at the beginning and end of the string, since we will assume you want brackets from any other values.

var array = str.replace(/(^\[|\]$)/g, '').split(', ');

Answer 2

var array = str.substring(1, str.length - 1).split(", ");