I have a faulty String inside a XML file: summary="The name is "Rambo"."
I would like to replace the inner quotes with " using regex so the output would look like:
summary="The name is "Rambo"."
4 Answers
This should work for you, buddie!
var outer = '"The name is "Rambo"."';
var inner = outer.replace(/^"|"$/g, '');
var final = '"' + inner.replace(/"/g, '"') + '"';
// (string) => "The name is "Rambo"."
Edit: You could shortcut this a little bit, but it's asymmetrical because JavaScript does not support regexp lookbehind
var str = '"The name is "Rambo"."';
var final = '"' + str.substr(1).replace(/"(?!$)/g, '"');
// (string) => "The name is "Rambo"."
Edit 2: Using str.slice it looks like this can be even simpler!
var str = '"The name is "Rambo"."';
var final = '"' + str.slice(1, -1).replace(/"/g, '"') + '"';
// (string) => "The name is "Rambo"."
2 Comments
Your solution works perfectly but my problem is regarding XML files. I have an XML file with faulty syntax. The strings in attributes have the quotes inside the text eg. summary="Great work by "THE" painter.". So I need to replace these with
" so that the syntax is corrected. After replacement the text should be summary="Great work by "THE " painter."
Mulan
Well that's not the question you posted. If you need to parse XML, you need an XML parser.
This is how I would approach it:
<script type="text/javascript">
var str = '"The name is "Rambo"."';
if(str.charAt(0)=='"' && str.charAt(str.length-1)=='"'){
str = '"'+str.substr(1,str.length-2).replace(/"/g,""")+'"';
}
console.log(str);
</script>
3 Comments
Mulan
Yeah, I was initially trying to play with
str.substr(1, str.length-2) but it just feeling kind of ugly
Samuel Cook
yeah, thats what made the throw the
if statement in, just to be sure the first and last characters were double quotes.
Bergi
You also could use the more simple
str.slice(1, -1)This script should fix all wrong quotes inside attributes:
var faultyXML = '<example summary="The name is "Rambo"."/>',
xmlString = faultyXML.replace(
/([^"=<>\s]+)="(.+?)"(?=\s+[^"=<>\s]+="|\s*\/?>)/g,
function(match, name, value) {
return name+'"'+value.replace(/"/g, """)+'"';
}
);
The regex looks complicated but is not :-)
([^"=<>\s]+) # group matching the attribute name. Simpler: (\w+)
=" # begin of value
(.+?) # least number of any chars before…
"(?= # a quote followed by
\s+[^"=<>\s]+=" # whitespace, attribute name, equals sign and quote
| # or
\s*\/?> # the tag end
)
Comments
An alternative regex/replace solution
Javascript
function innerToQuot(text) {
var last = text.length - 1;
return text.replace(/"/g, function (character, position) {
return (position === 0 || position === last) ? character : """;
});
}
console.log(innerToQuot('"The name is "Rambo"."'));
Output
"The name is "Rambo"."
On jsfiddle
Update: Based on your updated question.
Parse the XML to obtain your string value, then.
function innerToQuot(text) {
var match = text.match(/^([^"]*)(\s*=\s*)([\s\S]*)$/),
result = "",
first = 0,
last = -1;
if (match) {
result += match[1] + match[2];
text = match[3];
last += text.length;
} else {
first = last;
}
return result + text.replace(/"/g, function (character, position) {
return (position === first || position === last) ? character : """;
});
}
var text = 'summary="The name is "Rambo"."',
newText = innerToQuot(text);
console.log(newText);
Output
summary="The name is "Rambo"."
On jsfiddle
Write the new string back to the XML
"The name is \"Rambo\"."or really'"The name is "Rambo"."'?"so that the syntax is correct. After replacement the text should be summary="Great work by"THE"painter."