Regex find most center - regex

Question

I need to manully hyphante words that are too long. Using hyphen.js, I get soft hyphens between every syllable, like below.
I want to find the hyphen closes to the middle. All words will be more than 14 characters long. Regex that works in https://regex101.com/ or node/js example.
Basically, find the middle character excluding hyphens, check if there is a hyphen there, then step backwards one step and then forwards one step, then backwards to steps etc.
re-spon-si-bil-i-ties => [re-spon-si,-bil-i-ties]
com-pe-ten-cies. => [com-pe,-ten-cies.]
ini-tia-tives. => [ini-tia,-tives]
vul-ner-a-bil-i-ties => [vul-ner-a,-bil-i-ties]

Answer 1

Here's a simple js approach based on string splitting. There could be a binary search style algorithm as you mentioned which would avoid the array allocation but that seems overkill for these small data sets.
function halve(str) {
var right = str.split('-');
var left = right.splice(0, Math.ceil(right.length / 2));
return right.length > 0 ? [left.join('-'), '-' + right.join('-')] : left;
}
console.log(halve('re-spon-si-bil-i-ties'));
console.log(halve('com-pe-ten-cies.'));
console.log(halve('ini-tia-tives.'));
console.log(halve('vul-ner-a-bil-i-ties'));
console.log(halve('none')); // no hyphens returns ["none"]

Answer 2

You can work this out with this method:
Get middle point of string
From the middle point, and checking each character in both directions (left from middle, right from middle) check if that position is the - character. Set the index to the first such match.
If it matches that character, stop the loop and split the string on that index, otherwise return the original word.
words = [
're-spon-si-bil-i-ties',
'com-pe-ten-cies.',
'ini-tia-tives.',
'vul-ner-a-bil-i-ties',
'test',
'-aa',
'aa-'
];
split = '-'
for(word of words) {
m=Math.floor(word.length/2),offset=0,i=null
do{
if(word[m-offset] == split) i = m-offset
else if(word[m+offset] == split) i = m+offset
else offset++
}while(offset<=m && i == null)
if(i!=null && i>0) console.log([word.substring(0,i),word.substring(i)])
else console.log(word)
}

Answer 3

You can achieve this with:
var words = [
're-spon-si-bil-i-ties',
'com-pe-ten-cies.',
'ini-tia-tives.',
'vul-ner-a-bil-i-ties',
're-ports—typ-i-cal-ly',
'none'
];
for(var i = 0; i < words.length; ++i){
var matches = words[i]
.match(
new RegExp(
'^((?:[^-]+?-?){' // Start the regex
+parseInt(
words[i].replace( /-/g, '' ).length/2 // Round down the halfway point of this word's length without the hyphens
)
+'})(-.+)?$' // End the regex
)
)
.slice( 1 ); // Remove position 0 because it is the entire word
console.log( matches );
}
Regex explanation for re-spon-si-bil-i-ties:
^((?:[^-]+?-?){8})(-.+)$
^( - start the capture group leading up to the half way point
(?:[^-]+?-?) - find everything not a hyphen with an optional hyphen after it. Make the hyphen optional so that the second capture group can greedily claim it
{8} - 8 times; this will get us half way
) - close the half way capture group
(-.+)?$ - greedily get the hyphen and everything after it till the end of the string