Remove extra
's from a string

Question

I'd like to remove unnecessary strings:  ,   and   from a string, that might contain many of them in row. Example:

This is a string with many newlines. But it's ok to have one!

I would like it to become this:

This is a string with many newlines. But it's ok to have one!

Denys Séguret · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-13T14:53:16.070

3

You can do

str = str.replace(/<\/?br\s*\/?>\s*(<\/?br\s*\/?>)+/ig, '<br>');

edited Dec 13 '13 at 14:53

answered Dec 13 '13 at 14:43

Denys Séguret

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This also removes any space after duplicate `br`s (also, ignores `br`s with attributes) – John Dvorak Dec 13 '13 at 14:44
The downvotes are most likely purely ideological because you used regex to manipulate HTML – John Dvorak Dec 13 '13 at 14:45
1

Should perhaps make it case insensitive just to be safe. – cookie monster Dec 13 '13 at 14:51
@cookiemonster who uses uppercase tags nowadays anyways? – John Dvorak Dec 13 '13 at 14:52
@JanDvorak: Does it really matter? We're talking about adding the letter `i` to the regex. So why not? ;-p – cookie monster Dec 13 '13 at 14:53

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:01

2

var str = "This is a string with <br><br/> many <br/><br> newlines. <br><br><br /><br> But it's ok <br> to have one!";
var cleaned = str.replace(/(<br\s?\/?>\s?)+/g,"<br/> ");

And now the bad news, it is really a bad idea to match HTML tags with a regular expression. See this question: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

An alternative would be to set it to a element, loop through the nodes and remove the tags.

Quick and rough code, did not do a lot of testing on this

function removeDupeBrs (elem) {
    var childrenNodes = elem.childNodes;
    for (var i = childrenNodes.length-1; i>=0 ; i--) {
        var cn = childrenNodes[i];
        if (cn.nodeType===1 && cn.tagName==="BR") {
            var next = childrenNodes[i-1];
            if (next && next.nodeType===1 && next.tagName==="BR") {
                elem.removeChild(cn);                
            }
        }
    }    
}

var str = "This is a string with <br><br/> many <br/><br> newlines. <br><br><br /><br> But it's ok <br> to have one!";
var div = document.createElement("div");
div.innerHTML = str;
removeDupeBrs(div);
console.log(div.innerHTML);

edited May 23 '17 at 12:01

Community

1
1

answered Dec 13 '13 at 14:46

epascarello

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How's this different from Dystroy's answer? – John Dvorak Dec 13 '13 at 14:47
@JanDvorak Because I wrote the answer when there was not an answer and posted it... – epascarello Dec 13 '13 at 14:48
but why did you post it when Dystroy's answer is exactly the same? – John Dvorak Dec 13 '13 at 14:48
1

@JanDvorak BECAUSE I DID NOT SEE THE ANSWER! IT WAS NOT THERE! Do you not understand how time works? – epascarello Dec 13 '13 at 14:50
You are right about the alternative approach; if you show it in code, you deserve an upvote from me. (no need to shout, by the way; if I didn't expect an answer, I wouldn't ask) – John Dvorak Dec 13 '13 at 14:51
1

May want to turn the last `\s?` into `\s*` just in case there happens to be two or more spaces between a couple of `
` tags. – cookie monster Dec 13 '13 at 15:00

Remove extra 's from a string

2 Answers2

Remove extra
's from a string