Check String for Object/Dot Notation

Question

I have a function that takes a string as an argument, my problem is that the string can be a sentence such as: "My name is John Doe. I need a car." or it can be a dot notation: "this.is.dot.notation". I don't know much about regex (if that's what I need) but I would like to separate the two types.

Is there a way to check if a string is in Object/Dot notation or not, assuming that the string can also be a word or a sentence? From https://stackoverflow.com/a/2390793/1251031, I thought of this, but this would not work with a sentence that may contain more than one period correct? Should regex be used?

if(input.split('.').length > 1){

}

Later, the dot notation will be used to access Object properties as seen here: Convert string in dot notation to get the object reference

Answer 1

Test if the string contains at least 2 dots, but no spaces. That seems to be the definition of dot notation.

if (str.match(/\..*\./) && !str.match(/\s/)) {
    // dot notation
} else {
    // sentence
}

Or maybe it's a dot that isn't at the end of the string, and no whitespace:

if (str.match(/\.[^.]/) && !str.match(/\s)) {

Answer 2

This just checks if one or more word characters is followed by a dot that is followed by one or more word characters with no space inbetween. If you just need a boolean you can remove the ternary ( the question mark and everything following it (keep the semi-colon of course) ).

function isDotNotation(str) {
  return (/[\w+]\.[\w+]/gi).test(str) ? "Dot Notation" : "Sentence";
}

This would break it: isDotNotation("Hell o.there");

So here's an uglier one that checks for one or more whitespace/s.

function isDotNotation(str) {
  return ( (/[\w+]\.[\w+]/gi).test(str) ) && ( !(/\s+/g).test(str) ) ? "Dot Notation" : "Sentence";
}