How can you easily take a text file of newline seperated words and create a javascript array?

Question

How can you easily take a text file of newline seperated words and create a javascript array?

I have a text file of a ton of words that are seperated by a newline e.g.

hello
goodbye
Jim ran
what
is
the
name
etc.

I need to put these words into a Javascript array. Is there any easy way to do this? I tried copying and pasting it into a variable in a node prompt and then I was going to split it at the newlines, but that did not work because the prompt couldn't handle such a long string. Any ideas?

javascript
arrays
node.js
file
split

Answer 1

Here is one way:

var fs = require('fs');
var txt = fs.readFileSync('file.txt', {encoding: 'utf8'});
var arr = txt.split('\r\n');

console.dir(arr);

Answer 2

I know the op is asking for splitting it into an array, but if the file is large or an incoming stream it might be worthwhile using a stream and byline so you can write something like this:

var fs = require('fs'),
    byline = require('byline');

var stream = byline(fs.createReadStream('sample.txt'));

//The data event then emits lines:
stream.on('data', function(line) {
  console.log(line);
});