String manipulation

[danwednesday]

Hi,

I have a string like this:

v=1|w=2|x=3|y=4|z=5

I'd like to get the value of one of the variables given the variable name. e.g. I need to know what the value of x is.

Here is the code I have so far:

//Call function
getValue('x');

function getValue(variableIn){
	var wholeString = 'v=1|w=2|x=3|y=4|z=5';
	if(wholeString){
		var stringArray = wholeString.split('|');
		for(x in stringArray) {
			var stringItem = stringArray[x];
			var arrayStringItem = stringItem.split('=');
			for (y in arrayStringItem) {
				alert(arrayStringItem[y]);
			}
		}
	}else{
		return(0);
	}
}

This successfully alerts for each variable and value so I know it's almost working, but I need to just return the value of the variable passed into the function.

Can someone show me how to do this?

Thanks folks...

[mrhoo]

function getValue(variableIn){
	var wholeString='v=1|w=2|x=3|y=4|z=5';
	var rx= RegExp('\\b'+variableIn+' *\=([^\\|]+)');
	return rx.exec(wholeString)[1];
}

getValue('x')

[danwednesday]

Great, thanks for that - very neat indeed. Just one issue... I need to return the number zero if the variable being input isn't present in the string. At the moment it just errors when I call something like getValue('a');.

Is there a similarly elegant solution to this?

Thanks mrhoo!

[mrhoo]

function getValue(variableIn){
	var wholeString='v=1|w=2|x=3|y=4|z=5';
	var rx= RegExp('\\b'+variableIn+' *\=([^\\|]+)');
	var val= rx.exec(wholeString);
	return val? val[1]: 0;
}