regex swapping commented HTML in and out

Question

I'm having a bit of trouble with a couple of regex's that I almost got working earlier. I basically need to remove HTML comments from either side of a specific <span> tag.

This is what I have so far:

.replace(/<!--<span aria-hidden=\"true\" data-icon=\"e\"/,
         '<span aria-hidden="true" data-icon="e"')

.replace(/onclick=\"deletetodo(this)\"><\/span>-->/, 
         'onclick="deletetodo(this)"></span>');

Maybe I've been staring at this for too long and I can't spot an obvious mistake, but if anyone knows why this wont get rid of the  tags, you'd be saving me a massive headache!

Thanks.

[edit] Multi-lined for SO only, in code they're on a single line. [/edit]

Maybe there is more whitespace in the original string? HTML tends to be like that. — Halcyon, Feb 12 '13 at 23:33
try wrapping pattern strings in single quotes instead of `/ /` — charlietfl, Feb 12 '13 at 23:58
How are you using that, for what do you need it? Seems you are [misusing regex](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1048572) — Bergi, Feb 13 '13 at 00:01

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 12 '13 at 23:41

2

The parentheses should be escaped in regex when they are part of the string; you should try:

.replace(/onclick=\"deletetodo\(this\)\"><\/span>-->/, ...

instead of

.replace(/onclick=\"deletetodo(this)\"><\/span>-->/, ...

answered Feb 12 '13 at 23:41

tomcaa

130
4

Doing this, plus the suggested: swap `\"` with just `'` worked like a charm! – lukeseager Feb 13 '13 at 11:35

regex swapping commented HTML in and out

1 Answers1