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Convert a String to an Array in JavaScript

Mar 31, 2021

JavaScript strings have a built-in split() method that split a string by instances of a given separator. For example, here's how you can split a string by dashes:

const str = 'kebab-case-string';
str.split('-'); // ['kebab-case-string']

Or you can split a string by commas:

const str = '0,1,2';
str.split(','); // ['0', '1', '2']

Converting to a Character Array

There are numerous ways to convert a string to an array of characters. With an empty string as the separator, the split() function will return an array of characters:

'Hello'.split(''); // ['H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o']

However, this approach has a problem because of how split() handles UTF-16 characters. For example, emojis end up with incorrect results:

'Hello😀'.split(''); // ['H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '�', '�']

The Array.from() function handles UTF-16 characters. You should use Array.from() if you're looking to split a string into an array of characters and expect UTF-16 characters.

Array.from('Hello😀'); // [ 'H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '😀' ]

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