Shortest program to split a string at non-digits without RegExps [closed]

Question

EDIT: If you're using Lisp, I have given some guidelines at the bottom in counting bytes.

Objective: Make the shortest function that splits a string at non-digits and returns an array consisting of only digits in each string, without the use of any regular expressions. Leading zeroes are to be included in each string.

Current Standings (separated in categories):

• C/C++/C#/Java: 68 (C) ....
• GolfScript/APL/J: 13 (APL)
• All others: 17 (Bash, uses tr), 24 (Ruby)

Rules:

• The format must be as a function with a single string argument. Up to two additional arguments may be added if necessary for the proper return of the array (e.g. sh/csh/DOS Batch needs an extra variable reference to return, etc.).

• The primary function declaration doesn't count, and nor does importing other standard libraries. #includes, imports, and usings don't count. Everything else does. This does include #defines and helper functions. Sorry for the confusion. Refer to this as a helpful guide as to what does/does not count (written in C-style syntax)

  // doesn't count toward total, may be omitted unless
  // non-obvious, like half of Java's standard library.
  #include <stdio.h>
  
  import some.builtin.Class // doesn't count, see above
  
  #define printf p // counts towards total
  
  /* Any other preprocessor directives, etc. count. */
  
  int i = 0; // counts
  
  someFunction(); // counts
  
  char[][] myMainSplitFunction(char[][] array) { // doesn't count
    // Everything in here counts
    return returnArray; // Even this counts.
  } // doesn't count
  
  /* Everything in here counts, including the declaration */
  char[][] someHelperFunction(char[] string) {
      // stuff
  } // even this counts
  

• The output must be a string array or similar (Array lists in Java and similar are acceptable). Examples of accepted output: String[], char[][], Array<String>, List<String>, and Array (object).

• The array must contain only contain variable-length string primitives or string objects. No empty strings should be present in the return, with the exception below. Note: the strings are to contain a string of consecutive matches, such as the example input and output below.

• If there are no matches, then the function body should return null, an empty array/list, or an array/list containing an empty string.

• No external libraries allowed.

• DOS line endings count as one byte, not two (already covered in meta, but needs to be emphasized)

• And the biggest rule here: no regular expressions allowed.

This is a code-golf question, so shortest code wins. Good luck!

And here are some example inputs and outputs (with C-style escapes):

Input:  "abc123def456"
Output: ["123", "456"]

Input:  "aitew034snk582:3c"
Output: ["034", "582", "3"]

Input:  "as5493tax54\\[email protected]"
Output: ["5493", "54", "430", "52", "9"]

Input:  "sasprs]tore\"re\\forz"
Output: null, [], [""], or similar

Please put how many bytes used by your answers, and as always, happy golfing!

---

Guidelines for Lisp

Here's what does and doesn't count in Lisp dialects:

;;; Option 1
(defun extract-strings (a b) ; Doesn't count
(stuff) ;;; Everything in here counts
) ; Doesn't count
;;; Option 2
(defun extract-strings (string &aux (start 0) (end 0)) ; Doesn't count
(stuff) ;;; Everything in here counts
) ; Doesn't count.

All other lambdas fully count towards the byte count.

Answer 1

APL, 13 chars

(or 28 / 30 bytes, read below)

{⍵⊂⍨⍵∊∊⍕¨⍳10}

I see you've banned GolfScript from your question. I understand your sentiment, but I hope this community won't eventually ban APL, because it's a truly remarkable programming language with a long history, not to mention a lot of fun to code in. Maybe it could just be scored differently, if people feel it's competing unfairly. I'll post my thoughts on this matter to that thread you've linked.

On that same token, I've always added a footnote to my APL posts, claiming that APL could be scored as 1 char = 1 byte. My claim rests on the fact that a few (mostly commercial) APL implementations still support their own legacy single-byte encoding, with the APL symbols mapped to the upper 128 byte values. But maybe this is too much of a stretch, in which case you may want to score this entry as 28 bytes in UTF-16 or 30 bytes in UTF-8.

Explanation

{        ⍳10}  make an array of naturals from 1 to 10
       ⍕¨      convert each number into a string
      ∊        concatenate the strings into one (it doesn't matter that there are two 1s)
    ⍵∊         test which chars from the argument are contained in the digit string
 ⍵⊂⍨           use it to perform a partitioned enclose, which splits the string as needed

Examples

      {⍵⊂⍨⍵∊∊⍕¨⍳10} 'ab5c0x'
 5  0 
      {⍵⊂⍨⍵∊∊⍕¨⍳10}  'z526ks4f.;8]\p'
 526  4  8 

The default output format for an array of strings does not make it clear how many strings are there in the array, nor how many blanks. But a quick manipulation to add quotes should make it clear enough:

      {q,⍵,q←'"'}¨ {⍵⊂⍨⍵∊∊⍕¨⍳10} 'ab5c0x'
 "5"  "0" 
      {q,⍵,q←'"'}¨ {⍵⊂⍨⍵∊∊⍕¨⍳10}  'z526ks4f.;8]\p'
 "526"  "4"  "8" 

Answer 2

Python 47

Implementation

f=lambda s:"".join([' ',e][e.isdigit()]for e in s).split()

Demo

>>> sample=["abc123def456","aitew034snk582:3c","as5493tax54\\[email protected]","sasprs]tore\"re\\forz"]
>>> [f(data) for data in sample]
[['123', '456'], ['034', '582', '3'], ['5493', '54', '430', '52', '9'], []]

Algorithm

Convert each non-digit character to space and then split the resultant string. A simple and clear approach.

And a fun solution with itertools (71 characters)

f1=lambda s:[''.join(v)for k,v in __import__("itertools").groupby(s,key=str.isdigit)][::2]

Answer 3

Ruby, 70

f=->(s){s.chars.chunk{|c|c.to_i.to_s==c}.select{|e|e[0]}.transpose[1]}

Online Version for testing

Since converting any non-digit character to an int returns 0 in Ruby (with to_i), converting every char to int and back to char is the non-regex way to check for a digit...

Answer 4

Bash, 21 bytes 17/21 bytes (improved by DigitalTrauma)

Building a space-separated list with tr

function split() {
tr -c 0-9 \ <<E
$1
E
}

replaces any non digit by a space

Usage

$ for N in $(split 'abc123def456'); do echo $N; done
123
456

Edit

as pointed by the comments below, the code can be stripped down to 17 bytes:

function split() (tr -c 0-9 \ <<<$1)

and as the result is not stricly speaking a Bash array, the usage should be

a=(`split "abc123def456"`); echo ${a[@]}

and the extra (``) should be counted

Answer 5

bash, 26 (function contents: 22 + array assignment overhead 4)

This isn't going to beat the other bash answer, but its interesting because it might make you double-take:

f()(echo ${1//+([!0-9])/ })

Usage is:

$ a=(`f "ab5c0x"`); echo ${a[@]}
5 0
$ a=(`f "z526ks4f.;8]\p"`); echo ${a[@]}
526 4 8
$ 

At the first quick glance, //+([!0-9])/ looks a lot like a regexp substitution, but it isn't. It is a bash parameter expansion, which follows pattern-matching rules, instead of regular expression rules.

Returning true bash array types from bash functions is a pain, so I chose to return a space-delimited list instead, then convert to an array in an array assignment outside of the function call. So in the interests of fairness, I feel the (` `) around the function call should be included in my score.

Answer 6

Mathematica 32

StringCases[#,DigitCharacter..]&

Usage

inps ={"abc123def456", "aitew034snk582:3c", "as5493tax54\\[email protected]", 
        "sasprs]tore\"re\\forz"}  
StringCases[#,DigitCharacter..]&/@inps

{{"123", "456"}, 
 {"034", "582", "3"}, 
 {"5493", "54", "430", "52", "9"}, 
 {}
}

The equivalent using regexes is much longer!:

StringCases[#, RegularExpression["[0-9]+"]] &

Answer 7

Smalltalk (Smalltalk/X), 81

f := [:s|s asCollectionOfSubCollectionsSeparatedByAnyForWhich:[:ch|ch isDigit not]]

f value:'abc123def456' -> OrderedCollection('123' '456')

f value:'aitew034snk582:3c' -> OrderedCollection('034' '582' '3')

f value:'as5493tax54\[email protected]' -> OrderedCollection('5493' '54' '430' '52' '9')

f value:'sasprs]tore\"re\forz' -> OrderedCollection()

sigh - Smalltalk has a tendency to use veeeery long function names...

Answer 8

C, 68 bytes (only the function's body)

void split (char *s, char **a) {
int c=1;for(;*s;s++)if(isdigit(*s))c?*a++=s:0,c=0;else*s=0,c=1;*a=0;
}

The first argument is the input string, the second one is the output array, which is a NULL-terminated string array. Sufficient memory must be reserved for a before calling the function (worst case: sizeof(char*)*((strlen(s)+1)/2)).

The input string is modified by the function (every non-digit character is replaced by '\0')

Usage example

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>

void split (char *s, char **a) {
int c=1;for(;*s;s++)if(isdigit(*s))c?*a++=s:0,c=0;else*s=0,c=1;*a=0;
}   

void dump(char **t) {
    printf("[ ");for(;*t;t++)printf("%s ", *t);printf("]\n");
}   

int main() {
    char **r = malloc(1024);
    char test1[] = "abc123def456";
    char test2[] = "aitew034snk582:3c";
    char test3[] = "as5493tax54\\[email protected]";
    char test4[] = "sasprs]tore\"re\\forz";
    split(test1,r); 
    dump(r);
    split(test2,r); 
    dump(r);
    split(test3,r); 
    dump(r);
    split(test4,r); 
    dump(r);
    return 0;
}

Output

[ 123 456 ]
[ 034 582 3 ]
[ 5493 54 430 52 9 ]
[ ]

Un-golfed version:

void split (char *s, char **a) {
    int c=1; // boolean: the latest examined character is not a digit
    for(;*s;s++) {
        if(isdigit(*s)) {
            if(c) *a++ = s; // stores the address of the beginning of a digit sequence
            c=0;
        } else {
            *s=0; // NULL-terminate the digit sequence
            c=1;
        }   
    }   
    *a = 0; // NULL-terminate the result array
} 

Answer 9

K (ngn/k), 27 bytes

{[email protected]@=t-!#t:&~^(,/$!10)?x}

Try it online!

• (,/$!10) generate "0123456789"
• &~^(...)?x identify indices of digits in the input (e.g. "abc123def456" => 3 4 5 9 10 11)
• .t@=t-!#t: split the indices into groups of adjacent indices (e.g. 3 4 5 9 10 11 => (3 4 5;9 10 11))
• x@ index back into the original output and return (e.g. x[(3 4 5;9 10 11)] => ("123";"456"))

Answer 10

R, 81

f=function(x){
s=strsplit(x,"",T)[[1]]
i=s%in%0:9
split(s,c(0,cumsum(!!diff(i))))[c(i[1],!i[1])]
}

The function accepts a string and returns a list of strings.

Examples:

> f("abc123def456")
$`1`
[1] "1" "2" "3"

$`3`
[1] "4" "5" "6"

-

> f("aitew034snk582:3c")
$`1`
[1] "0" "3" "4"

$`3`
[1] "5" "8" "2"

$`5`
[1] "3"

-

> f("as5493tax54\\[email protected]")
$`1`
[1] "5" "4" "9" "3"

$`3`
[1] "5" "4"

$`5`
[1] "4" "3" "0"

$`7`
[1] "5" "2"

$`9`
[1] "9"

-

> f("sasprs]tore\"re\\forz")
$<NA>
NULL

Note: $x is the name of the list element.

Answer 11

Perl, 53

Edit: on no matches, sub now returns list with empty string (instead of empty list) as required.

It also avoids splitting on single space character, as it triggers 'split on any white-space' behavior, which probably violates the rules. I could use / / delimiter, which would split on single space, but paradoxically it would look like using regexp pattern. I could use unpack at the cost of some extra characters and so get rid of split controversy altogether, but I think that, what I finish with, splitting on a literal character (other than space) is OK.

sub f{shift if(@_=split a,pop=~y/0-9/a/csr)[0]eq''and$#_;@_}

And, no, Perl's transliteration operator doesn't do regular expressions. I can unroll 0-9 range to 0123456789 if that's the problem.

Answer 12

VBScript, 190 (164 without function declaration)

Function f(i)
For x=1 To Len(i)
c=Mid(i,x,1)
If Not IsNumeric(c) Then
Mid(i,x,1)=" "
End If
Next
Do
l=Len(i)
i=Replace(i,"  "," ")
l=l-Len(i)
Loop Until l=0
f=Split(Trim(i)," ")
End Function

While not competitive at all, I'm surprised that VBScript comes out this short on this given how verbose it is (13 bytes for the CRs alone). It loops through the string, replacing any non-numeric characters with spaces, then reduces all the whitespace to single spaces, and then uses a space delimiter to divide it.

Test cases

Input: "ab5c0x"
Output: 5,0

Input: "z526ks4f.;8]\p"
Output: 526,4,8

Answer 13

Common Lisp (1 according to the letter; ≈173 according to the spirit)

Here's a readable version. The byte count is fairly high because of the long names in things like digit-char-p and position-if and vector-push-extend.

(defun extract-numeric-substrings (string &aux (start 0) (end 0) (result (make-array 0 :adjustable t :fill-pointer 0)))
  (loop 
     (unless (and end (setq start (position-if #'digit-char-p string :start end)))
       (return result))
     (setq end (position-if (complement #'digit-char-p) string :start (1+ start)))
     (vector-push-extend (subseq string start end) result)))

(extract-numeric-substrings "abc123def456")
#("123" "456")

(extract-numeric-substrings "aitew034snk582:3c")
#("034" "582" "3")

(extract-numeric-substrings "as5493tax54\\[email protected]")
#("5493" "54" "430" "52" "9")

(extract-numeric-substrings "sasprs]tore\"re\\forz")
#()

The concept of "function declaration" is sort of vague. Here's a version that only has one byte (the character x in the function body); everything else is bundled in to the auxiliary variables of the function's lamba list (part of the function's declaration):

(defun extract-numeric-substrings (string 
                                   &aux (start 0) (end 0) 
                                   (result (make-array 0 :adjustable t :fill-pointer 0))
                                   (x (loop 
                                         (unless (and end (setq start (position-if #'digit-char-p string :start end)))
                                           (return result))
                                         (setq end (position-if (complement #'digit-char-p) string :start (1+ start)))
                                         (vector-push-extend (subseq string start end) result))))
  x)

The actual byte count will depend on how many of auxiliary declarations would have to be moved into the body for this to be deemed acceptable. Some local function renaming would help, too (e.g., shorten position-if since it appears twice, use single letter variables, etc.).

This rendering of the program has 220 characters:

(LOOP(UNLESS(AND END(SETQ START(POSITION-IF #'DIGIT-CHAR-P STRING :START END)))(RETURN RESULT))(SETQ END(POSITION-IF(COMPLEMENT #'DIGIT-CHAR-P)STRING :START(1+ START)))(VECTOR-PUSH-EXTEND(SUBSEQ STRING START END)RESULT))

If nothing else, this should promote Common Lisp's &aux variables.

This can be written more concisely with loop, of course:

(defun extract-numeric-substrings (s &aux (b 0) (e 0) (r (make-array 0 :fill-pointer 0)))
  (loop 
     with d = #'digit-char-p 
     while (and e (setq b (position-if d s :start e)))
     finally (return r)
     do 
       (setq e (position-if-not d s :start (1+ b)))
       (vector-push-extend (subseq s b e) r)))

The loop form, with extra space removed, has 173 characters:

(LOOP WITH D = #'DIGIT-CHAR-P WHILE(AND E(SETQ B(POSITION-IF D S :START E)))FINALLY(RETURN R)DO(SETQ E(POSITION-IF-NOT D S :START(1+ B)))(VECTOR-PUSH-EXTEND(SUBSEQ S B E)R))

Answer 14

JavaScript, 240 bytes

And for those of you who are curious, here's my probably huge golf:

function split(a) { // begin function
function f(c){for(var a=-1,d=9;d--;){var e=c.indexOf(d+"");0
>e||e<a&&(a=e)}return 0<a?a:null}var c=f(a);if(null==c)retur
n null;var d=[];for(i=0;;){a=a.substring(c);d[i]||(d[i]="");
c=f(a);if(null==c)break;d[i]+=a.charAt(c);0<c&&i++}return d;
} // end function

Above in pretty print:

function split(a) {
    function f(c) {
        for (var a = -1, d = 9;d--;) {
            var e = c.indexOf(d + "");
            0 > e || e < a && (a = e);
        }
        return 0 < a ? a : null;
    }
    var c = f(a);
    if (null == c) return null;
    var d = [];
    for (i = 0;;) {
        a = a.substring(c);
        d[i] || (d[i] = "");
        c = f(a);
        if (null == c) break;
        d[i] += a.charAt(c);
        0 < c && i++;
    }
    return d;
}

Above in normal descriptive code

function split(a) {
    function findLoop(string) {
        var lowest = -1;
        var i = 9;
        while (i--) {
            var index = string.indexOf(i + '');
            if (index < 0) continue;
            if (index < lowest) lowest = index;
        }
        return (lowest > 0) ? lowest : null;
    }
    var index = findLoop(a);
    if (index == null) return null;
    var ret = [];
    i = 0;
    for ( ; ; ) {
        a = a.substring(index);
        if (!ret[i]) ret[i] = '';
        index = findLoop(a);
        if (index == null) break;
        ret[i] += a.charAt(index);
        if (index > 0) i++;
    }
    return ret;
}

Answer 15

PHP 134

function f($a){
$i=0;while($i<strlen($a)){!is_numeric($a[$i])&&$a[$i]='-';$i++;}return array_filter(explode('-',$a),function($v){return!empty($v);});
}

Answer 16

C, 158

#define p printf
char s[100],c;int z,i;int main(){while(c=getchar())s[z++]=(c>47&&c<58)*c;p("[");for(;i<z;i++)if(s[i]){p("\"");while(s[i])p("%c",s[i++]);p("\",");}p("]");}

Since C doesnt have array print functions built-in I had to do that work on my own so I apologive that there is a final comma in every output. Essentially what that code does is it reads the string if it is not a digit it replaces it with '\0' and then I just loop through the code and print out all of the chains of digits.(EOF=0)

Input: ab5c0x
Output: ["5","0",]

Input: z526ks4f.;8]\p
Output: ["526","4","8",]

Answer 17

C#, 98

static string[] SplitAtNonDigits(string s)
{
    return new string(s.Select(c=>47<c&c<58?c:',').ToArray()).Split(new[]{','},(StringSplitOptions)1);
}

First, this uses the LINQ .Select() extension method to turn all non-digits into commas. string.Replace() would be preferable, since it returns a string rather than a IEnumerable<char>, but string.Replace() can only take a single char or string and can't make use of a predicate like char.IsDigit() or 47<c&c<58.

As mentioned, .Select() applied to a string returns an IEnumerable<char>, so we need to turn it back into a string by turning it into an array and passing the array into the string constructor.

Finally, we split the string at commas using string.Split(). (StringSplitOptions)1 is a shorter way of saying StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries, which will automatically takes care of multiple consecutive commas and commas at the start/end of the string.

Answer 18

JS/Node : 168 162 147 138 Chars

function n(s){
var r=[];s.split('').reduce(function(p,c){if(!isNaN(parseInt(c))){if(p)r.push([]);r[r.length-1].push(c);return 0;}return 1;},1);return r;
}

Beautified version:

function n(s) {
  var r = [];
  s.split('').reduce(function (p, c) {
    if (!isNaN(parseInt(c))) {
      if (p) {
        r.push([]);
      }
      r[r.length - 1].push(c);
      return 0;
    }
    return 1;
  }, 1);
  return r;
}

Answer 19

Ruby, 24

f=->s{s.tr("
-/:-~",' ').split}

Defines digits using negative space within the printable ascii range.

Answer 20

php, 204

function s($x){$a=str_split($x);$c=-1;$o=array();
for($i= 0;$i<count($a);$i++){if(ord($a[$i])>=48&&ord($a[$i])<=57)
{$c++;$o[$c]=array();}while(ord($a[$i])>=48&&ord($a[$i])<=57)
{array_push($o[$c],$a[$i]);$i++;}}return $o;}

Descriptive Code:

function splitdigits($input){

    $arr = str_split($input);
    $count = -1;
    $output = array();
    for($i = 0; $i < count($arr); $i++){


    if(ord($arr[$i]) >= 48 && ord($arr[$i]) <= 57){
        $count++;
        $output[$count] = array();
    }

    while(ord($arr[$i]) >= 48 && ord($arr[$i]) <= 57){
        array_push($output[$count], $arr[$i]);
        $i++;
    } 

}

return $output;
}

This is pretty long code and I'm sure there will be a much shorter php version for this code golf. This is what I could come up with in php.

Answer 21

Python

def find_digits(_input_):
    a,b = [], ""
    for i in list(_input_):
        if i.isdigit(): b += i
        else:
            if b != "": a.append(b)
            b = ""
    if b != "": a.append(b)
    return a

Answer 22

Python 104 83

def f(s, o=[], c=""):
    for i in s:
        try:int(i);c+=i
        except:o+=[c];c=""
    return [i for i in o+[c] if i]

@Abhijit answer is far clever, this is just a "minified" version of what i had in mind.

assert f("abc123def456") == ["123", "456"]
assert f("aitew034snk582:3c") == ["034", "582", "3"]
assert f("as5493tax54\\[email protected]") == ["5493", "54", "430", "52", "9"]
assert f("sasprs]tore\"re\\forz") == []

This yields no output, so the code is working, if ran one by one, as some variables are defined at the declaration.

Answer 23

PHP 98 89

As in DigitalTrauma's bash answer, this doesn't use a regex.

function f($x) {
// Only the following line counts:
for($h=$i=0;sscanf(substr("a$x",$h+=$i),"%[^0-9]%[0-9]%n",$j,$s,$i)>1;)$a[]=$s;return@$a;
}

Test cases:

php > echo json_encode(f("abc123def456")), "\n";
["123","456"]
php > echo json_encode(f("aitew034snk582:3c")), "\n";
["034","582","3"]
php > echo json_encode(f("as5493tax54\\[email protected]")), "\n";
["5493","54","430","52","9"]
php > echo json_encode(f("sasprs]tore\"re\\forz")), "\n";
null

Answer 24

Haskell 31

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
import Data.Char (isDigit)
import Data.Text (split)

f=filter(/="").split(not.isDigit)

It splits the string on all non-numeric characters and removes the empty strings generated by consecutive delimiters.

Answer 25

VBA 210, 181 without function declaration

Function t(s)
Dim o()
For Each c In Split(StrConv(s,64),Chr(0))
d=IsNumeric(c)
If b And d Then
n=n&c
ElseIf d Then:ReDim Preserve o(l):b=1:n=c
ElseIf b Then:b=0:o(l)=n:l=l+1:End If:Next:t=o
End Function

Answer 26

Rebol (66 chars)

remove-each n s: split s complement charset"0123456789"[empty? n]s

Ungolfed and wrapped in function declaration:

f: func [s] [
    remove-each n s: split s complement charset "0123456789" [empty? n]
    s
]

Example code in Rebol console:

>> f "abc123def456"
== ["123" "456"]

>> f "aitew035snk582:3c"
== ["035" "582" "3"]

>> f "as5493tax54\\[email protected]"
== ["5493" "54" "430" "52" "9"]

>> f {sasprs]torer"re\\forz}
== []

Answer 27

JavaScript, 104 97 89

Golfed:

Edit: When the loops walks off the end of the array, c is undefined, which is falsy and terminates the loop.

2/27: Using ?: saves the wordiness of if/else.

function nums(s) {
s+=l='length';r=[''];for(k=i=0;c=s[i];i++)r[k]+=+c+1?c:r[k+=!!r[k][l]]='';
r[l]--;return r
}

The carriage return in the body is for readability and is not part of the solution.

Ungolfed:

The idea is to append each character to the last entry in the array if it is a digit and to ensure the last array entry is a string otherwise.

function nums(s) {
    var i, e, r, c, k;
    k = 0;
    s+='x'; // ensure the input does not end with a digit
    r=[''];
    for (i=0;i<s.length;i++) {
        c=s[i];
        if (+c+1) { // if the current character is a digit, append it to the last entry
            r[k] += c;
        }
        else { // otherwise, add a new entry if the last entry is not blank
            k+=!!r[k].length;
            r[k] = '';
        }
    }
    r.length--; // strip the last entry, known to be blank
    return r;
}

Answer 28

Javascript, 72

function f(a){
 a+=".",b="",c=[];for(i in a)b=+a[i]+1?b+a[i]:b?(c.push(b),""):b;return c
}

Ungolfed

a+=".",b="",c=[];        //add '.' to input so we dont have to check if it ends in a digit
for(i in a)
    b=+a[i]+1?           //check if digit, add to string if it is
        b+a[i]:         
    b?                   //if it wasnt a digit and b contains digits push it
        (c.push(b),""):  //into the array c and clear b
    b;                   //else give me b back
return c

Sample input/output

console.log(f("abc123def456"));
console.log(f("aitew034snk582:3c"));
console.log(f("as5493tax54\\[email protected]"));
console.log(f("sasprs]tore\"re\\forz"));

["123", "456"]
["034", "582", "3"]
["5493", "54", "430", "52", "9"]
[] 

JSFiddle

Answer 29

R 52

This function splits strings by character class (this is not regex! :)) class is N - numeric characters and P{N} means negation of this class. o=T means omit empty substrings.

x
## [1] "wNEKbS0q7hAXRVCF6I4S" "DpqW50YfaDMURB8micYd" "gwSuYstMGi8H7gDAoHJu"
require(stringi)
stri_split_charclass(x,"\\P{N}",o=T)
## [[1]]
## [1] "0" "7" "6" "4"

## [[2]]
## [1] "50" "8" 

## [[3]]
## [1] "8" "7"

Answer 30

PHP 99

<?php

$a = function($s) {
foreach(str_split($s)as$c)$b[]=is_numeric($c)?$c:".";return array_filter(explode('.',implode($b)));
};

var_dump($a("abc123def456"));
var_dump($a("aitew034snk582:3c"));
var_dump($a("as5493tax54\\[email protected]"));
var_dump($a("sasprs]tore\"re\\forz"));

Output

array(2) {
  [3]=>
  string(3) "123"
  [6]=>
  string(3) "456"
}
array(3) {
  [5]=>
  string(3) "034"
  [8]=>
  string(3) "582"
  [9]=>
  string(1) "3"
}
array(5) {
  [2]=>
  string(4) "5493"
  [5]=>
  string(2) "54"
  [6]=>
  string(3) "430"
  [7]=>
  string(2) "52"
  [9]=>
  string(1) "9"
}
array(0) {
}