Remove leading zeros with regex but keep minus-sign at JavaScript

Question

Does someone have an idea how to remove leading zeros with regex but keen minus sign?

It so easy to do that for positive values

.replace(/^0+/,'')

but I absolutely have no idea how to do that in negative case, for example

from -0.05 value to be -.05
from -02.05 value to be -2.05

I have created jsFiddle example for clarity

Why not avoid regular expressions, and simply use [`parseFloat()`](http://jsfiddle.net/davidThomas/vs7xe/2/)? — David Thomas, Apr 19 '13 at 13:50
Also, if this is currency, there might be some rounding errors that mess up display when it's converted back to a string. — Francis Avila, Apr 19 '13 at 13:52
@Christoph: good point, I was focusing (only) on the second example. — David Thomas, Apr 19 '13 at 13:53
@Dadiv, Christoph is right, just checked at jsfiddle. result -0.05 — Denis, Apr 19 '13 at 13:53
Search for [Remove leading zeros with regex but keep minus-sign](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7907497/remove-leading-zeros-with-regex-but-keep-minus-sign?rq=1). — MikeM, Apr 19 '13 at 14:01
@MikeM, I have to agree with that. This is not a difficult problem at all, and it's now in my top-5 scoring answers in less than 15 min... — Francis Avila, Apr 19 '13 at 14:03

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 19 '13 at 13:50

15

Capture the negative sign and include it in the replacement:

n_string.replace(/^(-?)0+/,'$1');

answered Apr 19 '13 at 13:50

Francis Avila

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 14 '14 at 03:05

3

The following could also do the job, in additional, it will allow you to have a 0 before .

n_string.replace(/^(-)?0+(?=\d)/,'$1');

answered Jan 14 '14 at 03:05

loveNZ

2 Answers2