Find comma in quotes with regex and replace with HTML equiv

Question

I'm looking in a string such as:

"Hello, Tim"

Land of the free, and home of the brave

And I need it to become:

"Hello&#44; Tim"

Land of the free, and home of the brave

This I thought was simple, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Im importing a corrupt CSV with 1000s of entries via AJAX, so I just need to convert commas INSIDE of double quotes.

How would I go about do this with JavaScript? I can't figure it out. I tried

You sure you want to use javascript to do this? Why not fix the data outside of the import step, then import the fixed version? — Spencer Rathbun, Jun 13 '11 at 19:34
Still weird. Your JSON library should be able to handle string literal... Ho well. Just pointing out obvious things `:)` — Kobi, Jun 13 '11 at 19:41
I'm trying to parse with CSVtoArray() from: http://www.bennadel.com/blog/1504-Ask-Ben-Parsing-CSV-Strings-With-Javascript-Exec-Regular-Expression-Command.htm and my dataset is: https://gist.github.com/1023560 It's breaking every time it hits like and splits the " there so the array has just ` — Oscar Godson, Jun 13 '11 at 20:02
@Spencer we could use something else, but it's just for playing with right now for a prototype. We tried MySQL but the data was borked just like the JSON/Array with JavaScript. Im just trying to get the data fixed anyway i can :\ — Oscar Godson, Jun 13 '11 at 20:03

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 13 '11 at 19:31

3

var str = '"Hello, Tim"\n\
\n\
Land of the free, and home of the brave';

str
.split('"')
.map(function(v,i){ return i%2===0 ? v : v.replace(',','&#44;'); })
.join('"');

Check MDC for an implementation of map() for non-supporting browsers.

answered Jun 13 '11 at 19:31

davin

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Kobi · Answer 2 · 2011-06-13T19:39:59.990

2

It is probably easier with a callback function to replace:

s = s.replace(/"[^"]*"/g, function(g0){return g0.replace(/,/g,'&#44;');});

At the first step we find all quotes, and replace just the commas in them.

You can even allow escaping quotes:

CSV style (with two double quotes) - /"([^"]|"")*"/g
String literal style - /"([^"\\]|\\.)*"/g

edited Jun 13 '11 at 19:39

answered Jun 13 '11 at 19:34

Kobi

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This still doesn't take into account escaped quotes between string, we can complicate it further when needed. – Kobi Jun 13 '11 at 19:45
I think I'm also having issues with double quotes in the double quotes PLUS double quotes for HTML. For example: `""Example""`. It's breaking and returning ` – Oscar Godson Jun 13 '11 at 20:05
@Oscar - There is no way of guessing from the question that this is what you're doing... The problem is a lot more complex than it appears. Can you please *update the question* with the full details, including a problematic snippet from the JSON/CSV string, with explanation of how a standard parser fails? (Oh, I see you've done that in the comments. Great!) – Kobi Jun 13 '11 at 20:07
I think it'd be totally changing the scope of the question. Ill open a new question with more details and everything thats failing... – Oscar Godson Jun 13 '11 at 20:08

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 13 '11 at 19:35

1

With the above string as variable html you can use following code:

var m = html.match(/"[\s\S]*"/);
html = html.replace(m[0], m[0].replace(/,/g, '&#44;'));

OUTPUT

"Hello&#44; Tim"

Land of the free, and home of the brave

answered Jun 13 '11 at 19:35

anubhava

761,203
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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

0

result = subject.replace(/("[^"]+?),([^"]*?")/img, "$1,$2");

This will work properly with your example, the only catch is it will not work if you have multiple , inside of the ". If you need it to work with multiple , inside of the " then take a look at this for a more complete way to parse CSV data with javascript.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

Community

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1

answered Jun 13 '11 at 20:05

daalbert

1,465
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Find comma in quotes with regex and replace with HTML equiv

4 Answers4

OUTPUT

Linked

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