A trivial task, but handy enough to be mentioned here. You could use them like this:

var s='First|1'; alert('value is:'+getValue(s)); alert('alias is:'+getAlias(s)); 

/** * Returns the value in a value / alias pair formatted * like "value|alias". * * @param s the String to get the value (the part before * the pipe) from. * @return the value of the specified value / alias pair. */ function getValue(s){ 	return s.split('|')[0]; } /** * Returns the alias in value / alias pair. * * @param s the String to get the alias (the part after * the pipe) from. * @return the alias of the specified value / alias pair. */ function getAlias(s){ 	a=s.split('|') 	return a[a.length-1]; }