Removing blank lines from textarea with jQuery

Question

First, I've tried all possible solutions that I've found here or Google, but no one seems to work for me.

To be clear, I need to remove every empty lines from a text area. This is what I've done so far:

<textarea name="text" class="form-control" rows="14" id="text" placeholder="Here goes our query" ></textarea>


$(document).ready(function () {
    $('#text').focusout(function () {
        var text = $('#text').val();

        text.replace(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/gm,"");

        alert('done');
    });
});

I get successful alert on end, but those empty lines are still there. Is regexp correct ? My knowledge for js is not that big, so I need help :(

See [*JavaScript: how to use a regular expression to remove blank lines from a string?*](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16369642/javascript-how-to-use-a-regular-expression-to-remove-blank-lines-from-a-string) and [*Can't remove empty line break in textarea with Javascript replace method*](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13205169/cant-remove-empty-line-break-in-textarea-with-javascript-replace-method). Also, [*jquery text().replace('','') not working*](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28025944/jquery-text-replace-not-working). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Aug 01 '16 at 12:18

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_replace.asp

The replace() method searches a string for a specified value, or a regular expression, and returns a new string where the specified values are replaced.

So you are not actually changing the textarea value.

You can use

$(document).ready(function () {
    $('#text').focusout(function () {
        var text = $('#text').val();
        text = text.replace(/(?:(?:\r\n|\r|\n)\s*){2}/gm, "");
        $(this).val(text);
    });
});

The regex is from here.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 24 '23 at 23:13

The solution from @adam has a bug, the new line character for a valid row will be removed as well. Example:

Input:

Result with: text.replace(/(?:(?:\r\n|\r|\n)\s*){2}/gm, "");

However using a similar regex will solve it: text.replace(/^\s*$(?:\r\n?|\n)/gm, "");

Complete example with plain JavaScript:

<textarea class="form-control" rows="10" oninput="validateValue(this)"></textarea>

<script>
    function validateValue(elem) {
        const value = elem.value;
        const newVal = value.replace(/^\s*$(?:\r\n?|\n)/gm, "");

        elem.value = newVal;
    }
</script>

Source:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/16369725/3850405

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 01 '16 at 13:19

You can try like this:

$(document).ready(function () {
    $('#text').focusout(function () {
        var text = $('#text').val();

        var modifiedtext=text.replace(/ /g, "");
         $(this).val(modifiedtext);
        alert('done');

    });
});

Removing blank lines from textarea with jQuery

3 Answers3