Subtract two strings in jS

Question

I want to find the difference between two strings in Javascript.

Given two strings

 var a = "<div>hello</div><div>hi</div><div>bye/</div>";
 var b = "<div>hello</div><div>hi</div>";

The result should be "<div>bye</div>".

Like in formula:

var result = a - b;

& I need this implementation in Javascript (Is there any default method is available for this in JS??)

Can anyone help me out?

Already addressed here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8024102/javascript-compare-strings-and-get-end-difference — Menefee, Mar 26 '18 at 18:16
Is this for a string or specifically for DOM nodes? And there's not enough details about what you expect. Is this only for a starts with b? If b is `
hello
bye
` does that mean a-b is `
hi
`? Regardless, I feel like this isn't the right approach to your problem. — Kevin Raoofi, Mar 26 '18 at 18:20

score 21 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 26 '18 at 18:18

21

You can obtain the desired output with

var s = a.replace(b, '')

answered Mar 26 '18 at 18:18

wouldn't work the same if you change the order of divs. – bhansa Mar 26 '18 at 18:21

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 26 '18 at 18:39

5

This seems like an x/y question. But in any case, I’ll try to help you out.

We want to find the location of b within a.

var start = a.indexOf(b);
var end = start + b.length;

Now put it together.

return a.substring(0, start - 1) + a.substring(end);

edited Mar 26 '18 at 18:39

Rory O'Kane

answered Mar 26 '18 at 18:25

jojois74

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 19 '20 at 18:23

-1

var a = "<div>hello</div><div>hi</div><div>bye/</div>";
var b = "<div>hello</div><div>hi</div>";

c = a.substring(b.length)

console.log(c);

answered Oct 19 '20 at 18:23

Smartniggs

Your answer only works for cases where the `a` starts with `b`, if `b` is nested in `a`, this will not work. Although it works for the example given by the author, questions like this on SO should be answered generally – Samathingamajig Oct 19 '20 at 19:55

3 Answers3