Remove space before punctuation javascript/jquery

Question

I want to remove space before every punctuation in Javascript/jquery. For example

Input string = " This 's a test string ."

Output = "This's a test string."

I want a kitten. Did you have a question? Have you tried anything? Did it work? — Scott Sauyet
– Scott Sauyet, Commented Nov 18, 2013 at 12:07
what u meant by punctuation? Your example shows "Remove the whitespace from the beginning and end of a string" . Use .trim() function for that — Nandakumar
– Nandakumar, Commented Nov 18, 2013 at 13:02
yes i already visited the link with rajesh shared. i just want to know the solution in javascript/jquery — Venkat
– Venkat, Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 13:01
i hope trim fn will not remove the space in between the words or special characters. — Venkat
– Venkat, Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 13:02

Scott Sauyet · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-19 03:03:53Z

6

"This string has some -- perhaps too much -- punctuation that 's not properly "
+ "spaced ; what can I do to remove the excess spaces before it ?"
.replace(/\s+(\W)/g, "$1");

//=> "This string has some-- perhaps too much-- punctuation that's not properly "
//   + "spaced; what can I do to remove the excess spaces before it?"

edited Nov 19, 2013 at 3:03

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:17

Scott Sauyet

50.9k5 gold badges57 silver badges111 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

Marco Lackovic Over a year ago

\s+(\W) also removes line feeds. Use / +(\W)/g to take only the spaces out.

Gleno Over a year ago

Note that this acts on braces (eg ( { [) as well; which may not be what you intend.

user18430658 Over a year ago

This also doesn't work with other languages apart than english as \W means [^A-z][^0-9]

Anthony Grist · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 12:12:29Z

3

Use the String.replace function with a regular expression that will match any amount of whitespace before all of the punctuation characters you want to match:

var regex = /\s+([.,!":])/g;

var output = "This 's a test string .".replace(regex, '$1');

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:12

Anthony Grist

38.4k8 gold badges64 silver badges76 bronze badges

5 Comments

Scott Sauyet Over a year ago

Probably easier would be str.replace(/\s+(\W)/g, "$1");. Don't try to white list the characters you want to target, just use anything but word characters.

Anthony Grist Over a year ago

@ScottSauyet Easier, but possibly not exactly what they want. I see no reason to remove the space before an opening bracket, for example.

Scott Sauyet Over a year ago

Well, hyphens, parentheses, question marks, semicolons, and other punctuation characters are missing from your list. To me it's pretty simple that punctuation is all the non-whitespace, non-word characters. But the OP doesn't seem much interested...

Venkat Over a year ago

Anthony Grist your answer is similar to Scoot Sauyet , but with specific list of characters.

Venkat Over a year ago

its useful in my scenario, because i was using the regx in the "P" tag sometimes have html text like -" this 's test <span class='heiligh'>cliclk here,/span> paragarph". Scott Sauyet solution may not be useful. because that solution removes space in before span, output HTML like - "this's testcliclk here paragarph". Added +1 for your solution.

KeyNone · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 12:09:22Z

0

If you want to use regular expressions, then match on

/\s\./

and replace it with just a dot.

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:09

KeyNone

9,2904 gold badges37 silver badges52 bronze badges

Comments

user234 · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 12:19:34Z

0

try replace .

var test = "This's a test string";
test = test.replace(" 's", "'s");
OutPut = test;

edited Nov 18, 2013 at 12:19

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:11

user234

1201 silver badge11 bronze badges

1 Comment

GautamD31 Over a year ago

But @suchithra he asked to remove space between them.Not entirely remove 's

A Beginner · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 12:34:04Z

0

var str= "This 's a test string ."

var regex = /\s\'/i;

var output =str.replace(regex, "'");

edited Nov 18, 2013 at 12:34

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:20

A Beginner

4471 gold badge6 silver badges11 bronze badges

Comments

Nandakumar · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 13:23:34Z

0

If you want to remove specific punctuation from a string, it will probably be best to explicitly remove exactly what you want like

   replace(/[\.,-\/#!$%\^&\*;:{}=\-_`~()]/g,"")

Doing the above still doesn't return the string as you have specified it. If you want to remove any extra spaces that were left over from removing crazy punctuation, then you are going to want to do something like

 replace(/\s{2,}/g," ");

My full example:

  var s = "This., -/ is #! an $ % ^ & * example ;: {} of a = -_ string with `~)() punctuation";
    var punctuationless = s.replace(/[\.,-\/#!$%\^&\*;:{}=\-_`~()]/g,"");
 var finalString = punctuationless.replace(/\s{2,}/g," ");

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 13:23

Nandakumar

1,1012 gold badges11 silver badges30 bronze badges

Comments

GautamD31 · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 12:12:43Z

-1

Try to split like

var my_arr = [];
my_arr = my_str.split("'");
var output = $.trim(my_arr[0]) + "'" + $.trim(my_arr[1]);
alert(output);

See this FIDDLE But first of all,Try something.

edited Nov 18, 2013 at 12:12

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:07

GautamD31

28.8k10 gold badges66 silver badges86 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Remove space before punctuation javascript/jquery

7 Answers 7

3 Comments

5 Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

7 Answers 7

3 Comments

5 Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related