regex - JavaScript Split string by multiple occurrences of letters

Question

I am trying to split a string by a single or multiple occurrence of letters.

For example:

aaabbcapppp, would yield the array, ["aaa", "bb", "c", "a", "pppp"]

The most-Inefficient idea I had was to just utilize, newArray = str.split(""); and rebuild the array to my needs. I assume there is a much more efficient solution.

Answer 1

Something like this would work:

"aaabbcapppp".match(/(.)1*/g) // ["aaa", "bb", "c", "a", "pppp"]

The (.) matches any single character, captured in group 1, followed by that same character repeated zero or more times (1 is a backreference which matches exactly what was matched in group 1).

To match only Latin letters, consider using [a-z], for example:

"aaa-bbca!!pppp".match(/([a-z])1*/g) // ["aaa", "bb", "c", "a", "pppp"]

Here, the - and !! are not included in the result array.