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    <p>Four options / thoughts / suggestions:</p> <h3>1. Use JSON</h3> <p>If you're in control of the source format, I'd recommend using <a href="http://json.org" rel="nofollow">JSON</a> rather than rolling your own. Details on that page. JSON is now part of the <a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm" rel="nofollow">ECMAScript (JavaScript) standard</a> with standard methods for creating JSON strings from object graphs and vice-versa. With your example:</p> <pre><code>exampleVariable = { name: "string with spaces", cake:lie }; variableName = "variableValue,NoSpacesThough"; portal = "The Cake Is A Lie"; </code></pre> <p>here's what the JSON equivalent would look like:</p> <pre><code>{ "exampleVariable": { name: "string with spaces", cake:lie }, "variableName": "variableValue,NoSpacesThough", "portal": "The Cake Is A Lie" } </code></pre> <p>As you can see, the only differences are:</p> <ol> <li>You wrap the entire thing in curly braces (<code>{}</code>).</li> <li>You put the "variable" names (property names) in double quotes.</li> <li>You use a colon rather than an equal sign after the property name.</li> <li>You use a comma rather than a semicolon to separate properties (just as in the object literal you have on your <code>exampleVariable</code> line).</li> <li>You ensure that any string values use double, rather than single, quotes (JavaScript allows either; JSON is more restrictive). Your example uses double quotes, but I mention it just in case...</li> </ol> <h3>2. Pre-process it into JSON with regular expressions</h3> <p>If you're not in control of the source format, but it's <em>exactly</em> as you've shown, you could reformat it as JSON fairly easily via regular expressions, and then deserialize it with the JSON stuff. But if the format is more complicated than you've quoted, that starts getting hairy very quickly.</p> <p>Here's an example (<a href="http://jsbin.com/uqexil" rel="nofollow">live copy</a>) of transforming what you've quoted to JSON:</p> <pre><code>function transformToJSON(str) { var rexSplit = /\r?\n/g, rexTransform = /^\s*([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)\s*=\s*(.+);\s*$/g, rexAllWhite = /\s+/g, lines, index, line; lines = str.split(rexSplit); index = 0; while (index &lt; lines.length) { line = lines[index]; if (line.replace(rexAllWhite, '').length === 0) { // Blank line, remove it lines.splice(index, 1); } else { // Transform it lines[index] = line.replace(rexTransform, '"$1": $2'); ++index; } } result = "{\n" + lines.join(",\n") + "\n}"; return result; } </code></pre> <p>...but <strong>beware</strong> as, again, that relies on the format being exactly as you showed, and in particular it relies on each value being on a single line and any string values being in double quotes (a requirement of JSON). You'll probably need to handle complexities the above doesn't handle, but you can't do it with things like your first line <code>var s = (document.getElementById("gv").innerHTML).split(';');</code>, which will break lines on <code>;</code> regardless of whether the <code>;</code> is within quotes...</p> <h3>3. <em>Actually</em> parse it by modifying a JSON parser to support your format</h3> <p>If you can't change the format, and it's less precise than the examples you've quoted, you'll have to get into actual parsing; there are no shortcuts (well, no <em>reliable</em> ones). Actually parsing JavaScript literals (I'm assuming there are not <em>expressions</em> in your data, other than the assignment expression of course) isn't that bad. You could probably take a JSON parser and modify it to your needs, since it will already have nearly all the logic for literals. There are two on Crockford's github page (Crockford being the inventer of JSON), <a href="https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js/blob/master/json_parse.js" rel="nofollow">one using recursive descent</a> and <a href="https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js/blob/master/json_parse_state.js" rel="nofollow">another using a state machine</a>. Take your choice and start hacking.</p> <h3>4. The evil <code>eval</code></h3> <p>I suppose I should mention <code>eval</code> here, although I don't recommend you use it. <code>eval</code> runs arbitrary JavaScript code from a string. But because it runs <em>any</em> code you give it, it's not a good choice for deserializing things like this, and any free variables (like the ones you've quoted) would end up being globals. Really very ugly, I mostly mention it in order to say: Don't use it. :-)</p>
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    1. COThanks for the informative response, TJ. Unfortunately it doesn't answer my question! I could technically change what I have, but all that would happen is an increase in complexity and an added requirement of each variable needing to be on it's own line. The site's HTML could be minified later. Can you help with my question?
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    2. CO@Replete: Have another read through, I'm not sure you've understood. (And *you* haven't answered *my* question. ;-) Can you change the format?) The main point here is: Use JSON rather than your own format if you possibly can. JSON doesn't require the values to be on individual lines, I was just saying that that *sample* use of regular expressions, dashed off, does (and is more reliable than the code you quoted that you need to modify). I've broken the answer up into four separate parts for clarity (only three of which were there before; I added a fourth). Good luck with it,
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    3. COWow, this looks good. Thanks for such a great answer! Will confirm it when I get time to come back to this (at work at the moment).
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