JavaScript how to replace using wildcards

Question

I have a string with potentially random characters in it. I wanting to replace all instances of a section with wildcard support. Example:

var input = 'abcdef acbdef acdbef';

input = coolFunction(input, 'a*b', '_');

// I want to replace every charachter between an a and the next closest b with _'s
//Output should be '__cdef ___def ____ef'

Can someone tell me how I can do this?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions — gman, Aug 21 '19 at 16:32
Similar question that may help you: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52143451/javascript-filter-with-wildcard — benvc, Aug 21 '19 at 16:34
but second part of question - the output e.g. `____ef` (change all occurrence to _ is not trivial for me as pure regexp solution — Kamil Kiełczewski, Aug 21 '19 at 17:32

Kamil Kiełczewski · Answer 1 · 2019-08-21T17:22:16.290

0

Try

let input = 'abcdef acbdef acdbef';
let wild = 'a*b';

let re = new RegExp(wild.replace(/\?/,'.').replace(/\*/,'.*?'),'g');
let output = input.replace(re, c => '_'.repeat(c.length)); 

console.log(output);

edited Aug 21 '19 at 17:22

answered Aug 21 '19 at 16:35

Kamil Kiełczewski

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Check your output and then check the requested output. They want an underscore for each letter they substitute. So three underscores in the second example and four in the third. – Federico klez Culloca Aug 21 '19 at 16:38

JavaScript how to replace using wildcards

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