Easy Javascript Regex Question

Question

Why doesn't this assign prepClass to the string selectorClass with underscores instead of non alpha chars? What do I need to change it to?

var regex = new RegExp("/W/", "g");
var prepClass = selectorClass.replace(regex, "_");

Christian C. Salvadó · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-09 07:22:19Z

4

A couple of things:

If you use the RegExp constructor, you don't need the slashes, you are maybe confusing it with the syntax of RegExp literals.
You want match the \W character class.

The following will work:

var regex = new RegExp("\\W", "g");

The RegExp constructor accepts a string containing the pattern, note that you should double escape the slash, in order to get a single slash and a W ("\W") in the string.

Or you could simply use the literal notation:

var regex = /\W/g;

3 Comments

Matrym Over a year ago

Correctamundo. Thanks. I'll accept as soon as the time limit is up

Matrym Over a year ago

Side question - can I just use /\W/g inside replace rather than defining a variable regex?

Guffa Over a year ago

@Matrym: Yes, you can use either directly in the replace: .replace(new RegExp("\\W", "g"), "_") or .replace(/\W/g, "_").

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