Node.js - split string by new line character (JavaScript)

In this article, we're going to have a look at the problem of how to split string to separate lines in Node.js.

Example JavaScript source code run under Windows:

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const os = require('os');

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const text = 'line 1\r\nline 2';

const lines = text.split(os.EOL);  // or: text.split(/\r?\n/)

​

console.log(lines);  // ['line 1', 'line 2']

​

​

// os.EOL under:

//

//  - Linux and macOS is   \n

//  - Windows         is \r\n

Output:

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[ 'line 1', 'line 2' ]

Note: depending on operating system we have different END OF LINE symbols.

In practice, applications exchange data with external environment - it forces programmer to take care of the different cases.

If we are looking for some simple universal solution we can use:

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var text = 'line 1\nline 2';

var lines = text.split(/\r?\n/); // splits text by \r\n or \n

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console.log(lines);              // ['line 1', 'line 2']

Hint: check this article to know more universal solutions.

There is available some npm package to deal with newline characters.

Links:

1. EOL - npm page
2. EOL - GitHub page

Package installation: 

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npm install eol --save

Usage example:

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const eol = require('eol');  // or: import eol from 'eol'

​

const text = 'line 1\r\nline 2';

const lines = eol.auto(text);

​

console.log(lines);  // ['line 1', 'line 2']

1. JavaScript - split string by new line character