How to remove backslash at end of string?

Question

I am looping through a list of Discord guild names in node.js to generate a php file containing an array in the following format

<?php

$guildLookup = array( "164930842483761" => "guildName1",
"56334196291325" => "guildName2",
);

?>

One of the guild names is below

/ text \

so when I insert it in the php array it looks like

<?php

$guildLookup = array( "164930842483761" => "guildName1",
"56334196291325" => "guildName2",
"56334196291342" => "/     text    \",
"56334196291135" => "guildName4",
);

?>

which generates the following error when trying to access php array.

PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '487648187306475542' (T_LNUMBER), expecting ')'

presumedly since the backslash escapes the " at end of the line.

I tried a couple of variations on the following in node.js to escape a backslash at end of a guild name or even getting rid of it before putting it in php file but can't seem to get it working. Appreciate any suggestions I can try.

var newString = orginalString.replace(/\\$/, '\\');

@anubhava The php file containing the array is created in node and written to server. I think the error prevents the file from even loading so I don't understand how I could use preg_quote? — MorningSleeper, Oct 28 '20 at 17:23
@RisingSun I tried but can't seem to figure out the right regular expression to do so. — MorningSleeper, Oct 28 '20 at 17:24
Does this answer your question? [What does it mean to escape a string?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10646142/what-does-it-mean-to-escape-a-string) — RisingSun, Oct 28 '20 at 17:26

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 28 '20 at 17:21

'\\' means \, you must replace with 4 \\\\, that's two escaped \

//Use 4 backslashes for \\
//Also remove the $ because escaped characters can be anywhere
var newString = orginalString.replace(/\\/, '\\\\');

Also, I suggest you validate for quotes.

var newString = orginalString.replace(/'/, "\\'");

How to remove backslash at end of string?

1 Answers1