JavaScript how to split a string every n characters while ignoring ANSI codes

Question

How would you approach splitting a JavaScript string every n characters while ignoring the ansi codes? (so splitting every n + length of ansi characters contained in that string)

It is important to keep the ansi code in the final array.

I know using regex you'd write something like /.{1,3}/, but how would you ignore the ansi chars in the count?

Example:

Given \033[34mHey \033[35myou\033[0m, how would you split every 3 chars to get:

[
  '\033[34mHey',
  ' \033[35myo',
  'u\033[0m'
]

Answer 1

Here is a way to achieve what you need:

s = "\033[34mHey \033[35myou\033[0mfd\033[1m";
chunks = s.match(/(?:(?:\033\[[0-9;]*m)*.?){1,3}/g);
var arr = [];
[].forEach.call(chunks, function(a) {
    if (!/^(?:\033\[[0-9;]*m)*$/.test(a)) {
		arr.push(a);
    }
});
document.getElementById("r").innerHTML = JSON.stringify(arr);

<div id="r"/>

Note that octal codes can be used directly in the regex. We filter all the empty and ANSI-color code only elements in the forEach call.