Extract float from price-formatted string using regex in jQuery/JS

Question

Reaching out to all the JS regex gurus out there. I am building a function that would remove $, white space, comma, [A-Z], [a-z] from string, leaving only float (if it exists within the string given) something like so:

var result = myFunction( 'USD $12, 345.95'); //result = 12345.95
var result = myFunction( 'ten dollars US' ); // result = false

function myFunction( weirdString ){

    // some code

}

I know I can go something like (forgive me if I'm wrong):

weirdString.replace(/[&$<>"'`=\/\s]|[A-Z]|[a-z]/g, '');
isNaN( weirdString ) ? return false : return weirdString;

But what is the right way?

No need to separate those square bracket character sets with alternators. You can just use [&$<>"'`=\/ A-Z]a-z]. Also just use a literal space if that's all you're expecting. \s matches any whitespace character. — CAustin
– CAustin, Commented Nov 16, 2017 at 1:40

omijn · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-16 19:56:14Z

1

Instead of blacklisting every character you don't want to allow, you can kind of whitelist only the characters you need:

[^\d.]  // match anything that isn't a digit or period

The advantage of this is that you don't have to think of every possible character to reject. For example, if for whatever reason, the character é (e with an accent) appears in your string, the regex you were using will consider it as part of the floating point number, which you probably don't want.

Test it here: https://regex101.com/r/g8zBRP/2

edited Nov 16, 2017 at 19:56

answered Nov 16, 2017 at 4:27

omijn

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Pavel · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-17 06:25:20Z

0

So here's the function I came up with:

function extractFloatFromString( input ){

    var result = input.match( /[\d+.]/g );
    return result == null ? 0 : result.join('');

}

https://jsfiddle.net/7hq1dcwn/3/

answered Nov 17, 2017 at 6:25

Pavel

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