Borislav Hadzhiev
Reading timeยท3 min
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To get the first word of a string in JavaScript:
String.split()
method to split the string into an array of words.0
to get the first word of the string.const str = 'Hello world'; const first = str.split(' ')[0] console.log(first); // ๐๏ธ Hello
The String.split() method splits a string into an array based on the provided separator.
const str = 'Hello world'; const split = str.split(' ') console.log(split) // ๐๏ธ ['Hello', 'world']
We split the string on each space to get an array of the words in the string.
The last step is to access the array element (word) at index 0
.
0
and the index of the last element is arr.length - 1
.You can also use the Array.at()
method to get the first array element.
const str = 'Hello world'; const first = str.split(' ').at(0); console.log(first); // ๐๏ธ Hello
The Array.at() method takes an integer value and returns the item at that index.
If the index is not contained in the array, the method returns undefined
.
If your string starts with a space, use the String.trim()
method to remove
any leading and trailing whitespace characters before calling the
String.split()
method.
const str = ' Hello world'; const first = str.trim().split(' ')[0]; console.log(first); // ๐๏ธ Hello
String.trim()
method to remove the leading and trailing whitespace from the string and then called the String.split()
method.This is necessary because if the string starts with a whitespace character, the first element in the array would be an empty string.
const str = ' Hello world'; // ๐๏ธ [ '', 'Hello', 'world' ] console.log(str.split(' '));
Alternatively, we can use the Array.shift()
method.
To get the first word of a string in JavaScript:
String.split()
method to split the string into an array of words.Array.shift()
method to remove and return the first element from
the array.const str = 'Hello world'; const first = str.split(' ').shift(); console.log(first); // ๐๏ธ Hello
We used the String.split()
method to split the string into an array of words.
const str = 'Hello world'; // ๐๏ธ [ 'Hello', 'world' ] console.log(str.split(' '));
The Array.shift method removes and returns the first element from the array.
Alternatively, you can use the String.slice()
method.
To get the first word of a string in JavaScript:
String.indexOf()
method to get the index of the first space in the
string.String.slice()
method to get the part of the string before the
first space.const str = 'Hello world'; const firstWord = str.slice(0, str.indexOf(' ')); console.dir(firstWord); // ๐๏ธ 'Hello'
We used the String.indexOf()
method to get the index of the first occurrence
of a space in the string.
const str = 'Hello world'; console.log(str.indexOf(' ')); // ๐๏ธ 5
We passed the following arguments to the String.slice() method:
The String.slice()
method returns the first word of the string, or in other
words, the part of the string before the first space.