Javascript replace function not working when search pattern contain ? mark

Question

I am facing an issue with the replace function in javascript.

"demo text?for test".replace(new RegExp("text?for", 'g'), "text for");

Its return output is "demo text?for test".

I think, I am missing something but I don't know.

Below is my function I used in my application

 var replaceAll = function (targetString, search, replacement) {
            return targetString.replace(new RegExp(search, 'g'), replacement);
        };

 replaceAll("This is my favorite video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MPiLq0fKc", "video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MPiLq0fKc", "http://d-d.co/4eDED")

output is "This is my favorite video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MPiLq0fKc"

`?` has special meaning in regular expressions. You need to escape that character. — zzzzBov, Aug 02 '17 at 13:50

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 02 '17 at 14:00

1

Your code works, provided you supply the regular expression as a string enclosed in / and with the special characters properly escaped, like this:

var replaceAll = function(targetString, search, replacement) {
  return targetString.replace(new RegExp(search, 'g'), replacement);
};

console.log(replaceAll("This is my favorite video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MPiLq0fKc", /video https:\/\/www\.youtube\.com\/watch\?v=n3MPiLq0fKc/, "http://d-d.co/4eDED"))

answered Aug 02 '17 at 14:00

Angelos Chalaris

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Thanks for response. can we add escape character in text through any javascript function before replace? – Naresh Pansuriya Aug 02 '17 at 14:07
RegExp.escape= function(s) { return s.replace(/[-\/\\^$*+?.()|[\]{}]/g, '\\$&'); }; – Naresh Pansuriya Aug 08 '17 at 05:25

Javascript replace function not working when search pattern contain ? mark

1 Answers1