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I'm trying to replace all full stops in an email with an x character - for example "my.email@email.com" would become "myxemail@emailxcom". Email is set to a string.
My problem is it's not replacing just full stops, it's replacing every character, so I just get a string of x's.
I can get it working with just one full stop, so I'm assuming I'm wrong on the global instance part. Here's my code:

let re = ".";
let new = email.replace(/re/gi, "x");

I've also tried

re = /./gi;
new = email.replace(re, "x");

If anyone can shed any light I'd really appreciate it, I've been stuck on this for so long and can't seem to figure out where I'm going wrong.

** Edit: Whoops, my new variable was actually called newemail, keyword new wasn't causing the issue!

Rebecca
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3 Answers3

96

Your second example is the closest. The first problem is your variable name, new, which happens to be one of JavaScript's reserved keywords (and is instead used to construct objects, like new RegExp or new Set). This means that your program will throw a Syntax Error.

Also, since the dot (.) is a special character inside regex grammar, you should escape it as \.. Otherwise you would end up with result == "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx", which is undesirable.

let email = "my.email@email.com"

let re = /\./gi;
let result = email.replace(re, "x");

console.log(result)
gyre
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    I was going wrong with the /./gi, /\./ solved the issue! Thanks a million! – Rebecca Apr 09 '17 at 19:57
  • how to replace a character in a string based on index? – George Jan 26 '18 at 07:41
  • @George What do you mean? Can you give me a desired example/output? – gyre Jan 26 '18 at 07:42
  • `let theString = "george"` , i want to replace the third character for example `theString[2]="a"` so now it would be 'gearge' – George Jan 26 '18 at 07:46
  • in that case I would suggest: `let string = 'george'; let result = string.slice(0, 2) + 'a' + string.slice(3);` – gyre Jan 26 '18 at 07:59
  • thank you sounds good currently i am transforming it to array then do the change then transforming it to string i'll try your way asap – George Jan 26 '18 at 08:15
  • Do not forget that `g` to make the expression global. I always do. – Björn Jul 23 '21 at 09:01
73

You can try split() and join() method that was work for me. (For normal string text) It was short and simple to implement and understand. Below is an example.

let email = "my.email@email.com";
email = email.split('.').join('x');

So, it will replace all your . with x. So, after the above example, email variable will have value myxemail@gmailxcom

Ajay Gupta
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9

You may just use replaceAll() String function, described here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/replaceAll

If you are getting Property 'replaceAll' does not exist on type 'string' error - go to tsconfig.json and within "lib" change or add "es2021".

Like this:

enter image description here

More info here: Property 'replaceAll' does not exist on type 'string'

Konstantin
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