Extracting names with regex

[cyberRobot]

I'm looking to extract names from a string that is typically formatted like the following examples:

• Paul Jones and Mike Smith
• Emily Salazar, Marcia Dunn, and John Miller
• Mike Smith

The following code seems to be working:

var inputValues = inputString.split(/, (?:and )?|(?: and )/);

Does anyone have any ideas for streamlining the regex portion? I'm especially interested if there's a way to write it without the straight bar (|).

[requinix]

I might replace the " and " with ", ", then split.

inputString.replace(/ and /g, ", ").split(/,[\s,]*/)

 

[cyberRobot]

That's much cleaner. Thanks for the suggestion!