Regex to replace comma and spaces together

Question

I have the text in the string below:

string = "ele, joao     gosta  de   maria,   mas   maria gosta        de jose";

string = string.replace(/???/g,", ");

Note that some words have more or less spaces between them, and may still have commas after a word, but never a space before a comma.

How to build a Regex on replace to reach the result below?

ele, joao, gosta, de, maria, mas, maria, gosta, de, jose

That is, each word separated by a comma and a space.

I tried something like this: string = string.replace(/,\s+/g,", "); but it didn’t work out so well. Commas are left over.

Answer 1

This regex works well:

(,?\s+)

Entree:

"ele, joao     gosta  de   maria,   mas   maria gosta        de jose"

Exit:

"ele, joao, gosta, de, maria, mas, maria, gosta, de, jose"

let string = "ele, joao     gosta  de   maria,   mas   maria gosta        de jose"

string = string.replace(/,?\s+/g, ", ")

console.log(string)

Explanation

,? picked up by a comma that may or may not be there (optional).

\s+ picked up by one or more spaces.

Answer 2

The response of @Francis I thought better, but I also managed with this regex below, which I will leave here as reference:

[,|\s]+

A regex casa any occurrence of comma and/or sequence of spaces.

Testing:

string = "ele, joao     gosta  de   maria,   mas   maria gosta        de jose";

string = string.replace(/[,|\s]+/g,", ");

console.log(string);