JavaScript regexp, replacing all character except given selection.

Question

I want to replace all characters in a string apart from English alpabets. My current regex is of the nature, 'ab-aml1'.replace(/![a-zA-Z]/g,''). I would expect this to return abaml. However it returns the entire string passed to it. How can I do a negation selection?

thefourtheye · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-10 06:43:46Z

2

JavaScript's logical NOT operator will not work in RegEx. If you want any other data apart from alphabets to be removed, you can use [^a-zA-Z]. It is called negated character set and it means that, anything which is NOT a-zA-Z.

console.log('ab-aml1'.replace(/[^a-zA-Z]/g,''));

Output

abaml

answered Jan 10, 2014 at 6:43

thefourtheye

241k53 gold badges466 silver badges505 bronze badges

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

3 Comments

Amal Antony Over a year ago

Oh, I assumed ^ would only be for matching starting with. I forgot the dual usage! Thanks for your help.

Grundy Over a year ago

@thefourtheye possibly clear \W instead of [^a-zA-Z]

thefourtheye Over a year ago

@Grundy \W will not remove the number 1 :)

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

JavaScript regexp, replacing all character except given selection.

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related