String.replace for multiple unique characters and replacements

Question

After reading MDN documentation, as well as W3schools, I'm still unsure of how to use .replace to replace multiple special characters all with their own unique replacement.

So if I write a function that takes a string as an argument, that string may be different each time, with special characters in each string. I want to be able to write a single replace statement that will check for those special characters and then depending up which special character is found, replace that character with a corresponding unique replacement.

An example, if I pass a string like dave & dave I may want to replace the & symbol with the characters "and" instead, which is simple enough, but what if the next string that is passed to the function has a $ that I want to replace with "dollar".

I can create such a function for a single unique character with replacement like:

string.replace(/&/g, "and");

But I'm not sure how to have multiple characters checked and then replaced with particular unique replacements.

you could stack the `replace` like `string.replace(/&/g,'and').replace(/$/g,'dollar');` — depperm, Dec 01 '15 at 18:50
@Chirpizard: See this [demo](http://jsfiddle.net/8nzphj03/). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Dec 01 '15 at 19:08
@stribizhev Nice solution, similar to the solution posted below. I think this one is actually easier to follow. Thanks for sharing! — Chirpizard, Dec 01 '15 at 19:17
Ok, I would close your question as a dupe of [Efficiently replace all accented characters in a string?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/286921/efficiently-replace-all-accented-characters-in-a-string), but ... no. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Dec 01 '15 at 19:48

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 01 '15 at 18:56

1

You could use a replacement function, something like:

var st = "& $ % !";

var replaced = st.replace(/[&$%!]/g, 
  function(piece) {
    var replacements = {
      "&": "and",
      "$": "dollar",
      "%": "pct",
      "!": "bang"
    };
  
    return replacements[piece] || piece;
  });

console.log(replaced);

answered Dec 01 '15 at 18:56

Paul Roub

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This does work! The only thing I don't understand is the `piece` argument passed into the function. How is the `piece`/symbol to be replaced get passed as the argument? Thanks for this solution, also! – Chirpizard Dec 01 '15 at 19:16
That's what `replace` *does* when you pass a function as the second argument. It passes each match to your function, and you return the replacement for that match. – Paul Roub Dec 01 '15 at 19:18
Awesome. Thanks for the explanation! – Chirpizard Dec 01 '15 at 19:22

String.replace for multiple unique characters and replacements

1 Answers1