javascript replace --- to -

Question

How do I replace a string that contains --- to - ?

For example :

Vision & Mission

I've managed to replace space and other special characters to - and lower case the text, so the string becomes :

vision---mission

now i need another replace to replace --- to -

Of course, that should be flexible. So for example when user inputs Vision& Mission (typo intended) the replacing will generate vision--mission (two dashes), so in that case I will need to replace -- to -

so basically I need a replace technique to replace an undetermined number of dashes to only 1 dash.

Thanks

Wait, are you trying to replace a single em-dash character (`—`), or three dash characters (`---`)? Your question and its title disagree. — Piskvor left the building, Feb 21 '11 at 09:10
three dash characters. must have been the auto formatting in title text. i inputted three dash characters in the title. — Henson, Feb 21 '11 at 09:24
Hmm, looks like it: in the edit window, they are again three dashes. — Piskvor left the building, Feb 21 '11 at 16:47

glmxndr · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-21T11:02:38.220

8

Use replace with a regexp telling to replace all sequences of dashes by a single dash.

"my--string".replace(/-+/g, "-"); // => "my-string"

Note that you could do that from the beginning, when you replace all the special characters and spaces by a dash. For example, the regexp literal /[^a-z0-9]+/ig finds all sequences of non alphanumeric characters.

"Smith & Wesson".replace(/[^a-z0-9]+/ig, "-"); // => "Smith-Wesson"

Then you just need to .toLowerCase() your string...

edited Feb 21 '11 at 11:02

answered Feb 21 '11 at 08:59

glmxndr

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thanks! that's what i need. by the way what does /ig mean? g i assume is global right? so what is i? – Henson Feb 21 '11 at 09:21
The 'i' flag means case insensitive. If you didn't put it, you would need to write /[^A-Za-z0-9]+/ig (with explicit capital letters). 'g' flag is for global indeed. – glmxndr Feb 21 '11 at 11:00
Are you sure that nothing éxčëpť `a-zA-Z0-9` cóůld be an alphanumeric character? Poor Kurt Gödel - he'll become Kurt-G-del. Not all alphabetic characters are encoded by ASCII. +0 in total ;) – Piskvor left the building Feb 21 '11 at 16:55
1

If the aim is to generate an ID without any accentuated character, you may use the code from this question before removing the special characters : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/990904/javascript-remove-accents-in-strings – glmxndr Feb 21 '11 at 18:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 21 '11 at 09:03

1

I think you can simplify your whole function:

yourString.toLowerCase().replace(/\W+/g, '-')

answered Feb 21 '11 at 09:03

Alexey Lebedev

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javascript replace --- to -

2 Answers2