Following is an example on how can we use Regular Expression to parse a CSV file in Java script
function CSVToArray( strData, strDelimiter ){
// Check to see if the delimiter is defined. If not,
// then default to comma.
strDelimiter = (strDelimiter || ",");
// Create a regular expression to parse the CSV values.
var objPattern = new RegExp(
(
// Delimiters.
"(\\" + strDelimiter + "|\\r?\\n|\\r|^)" +
// Quoted fields.
"(?:\"([^\"]*(?:\"\"[^\"]*)*)\"|" +
// Standard fields.
"([^\"\\" + strDelimiter + "\\r\\n]*))"
),
"gi"
);
// Create an array to hold our data. Give the array
// a default empty first row.
var arrData = [[]];
// Create an array to hold our individual pattern
// matching groups.
var arrMatches = null;
// Keep looping over the regular expression matches
// until we can no longer find a match.
while (arrMatches = objPattern.exec( strData )){
// Get the delimiter that was found.
var strMatchedDelimiter = arrMatches[ 1 ];
// Check to see if the given delimiter has a length
// (is not the start of string) and if it matches
// field delimiter. If id does not, then we know
// that this delimiter is a row delimiter.
if (
strMatchedDelimiter.length &&
strMatchedDelimiter !== strDelimiter
){
// Since we have reached a new row of data,
// add an empty row to our data array.
arrData.push( [] );
}
var strMatchedValue;
// Now that we have our delimiter out of the way,
// let's check to see which kind of value we
// captured (quoted or unquoted).
if (arrMatches[ 2 ]){
// We found a quoted value. When we capture
// this value, unescape any double quotes.
strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 2 ].replace(
new RegExp( "\"\"", "g" ),
"\""
);
} else {
// We found a non-quoted value.
strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 3 ];
}
// Now that we have our value string, let's add
// it to the data array.
arrData[ arrData.length - 1 ].push( strMatchedValue );
}
// Return the parsed data.
return( arrData );
}
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