remove extra spaces in string in javascript

Question

I have a text and after deleting special characters (!@#$%^&*()-=+`";:'><.?/) and show just letters and numbers (and float numbers like 23.4 ) it returns some extra space

    const input : 'this is a signal , entry : 24.30 and side is short';

    const text = input.replace(/\.(?!\d)|[^\w.]/g, " ").toUpperCase();

    console.log(text.split(" "))

the output :

[
  'THIS',   'IS',    'A',
  'SIGNAL', '',      '',
  '',       'ENTRY', '',
  '',       '24.30', 'AND',
  'SIDE',   'IS',    'SHORT'
]

but I want to be this :

[
  'THIS',   'IS',    'A',
  'SIGNAL', 'ENTRY', '24.30',  
  'AND',    'SIDE',   'IS',     
  'SHORT'
]

And when I replace spaces and enters with empty string , returns this :

[ 'THISISASIGNALENTRY24.30ANDSIDEISSHORT' ]

what is the problem of my code?

Answer 1

Instead of replacing, consider matching all the sorts of characters you want to produce the array of words. It looks like you want something like:

const input = 'this is a signal , entry : 24.30 and side is short';
const matches = input.toUpperCase().match(/[\w.]+/g);
console.log(matches);