javascript regex to remove whitespace fails, why?

Question

I use text.replace(/\s/g, '') to remove all whitespace characters from a String.

I'm trying this on a russian text. I do an alert(text) which shows me the correct string, but the replace function throws this error - Bad Argument /\s/g

I'm creating .jsx files for Adobe InDesign scripting. The replace method works for some strings but fails sometimes. Any idea why?

Thanks.

EDIT

for (var i=0; i<arr.length; i++) {
    // If there is no text for the current entry, remove it
    alert(arr[i].text);
    if (arr[i].text == undefined || arr[i].text === "")  {
        arr.splice(i,1);
        i--;
        continue;
    }


    var trimmed = arr[i].text.replace(/\s/g, '');
        if (trimmed.text === "") {
        entries.splice(i,1);
        i--;
    }
.
.
.
}

InDesign API returns blank paragraphs, @GrantThomas. I'm just checking if the paragraph contains no meaningful text I'll not output it. So, I'm trying to remove all whitespace and compare with a "". — divyanshm, May 30 '13 at 07:46

Mark Walters · Answer 1 · 2013-05-30T07:58:30.870

0

My bad - this is my edited answer.

var str = "Hello this is my test string";
var newStr = str.replace(/ /g, '');

alert(newStr) // "Hellothisismyteststring";

edited May 30 '13 at 07:58

answered May 30 '13 at 07:53

Mark Walters

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http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163169/removing-whitespace-from-string-in-javascript – divyanshm May 30 '13 at 07:55

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 30 '13 at 07:56

0

You need to escape ("\\") if there are any regex special characters like $, ^, etc... in your text.

-Try to post the fiddle or paste the failing text, we can check the issue.

answered May 30 '13 at 07:56

ManKum

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 31 '13 at 18:03

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I was using .text( ) to populate the text objects. I learnt that this function converts space to non breaking space (character 160).

Had to strip that too...
text.replace(/ |\s+/g)

answered May 31 '13 at 18:03

divyanshm

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javascript regex to remove whitespace fails, why?

3 Answers3