javascript replace --- to -

Question

How do I replace a string that contains --- to - ?

For example :

Vision & Mission

I've managed to replace space and other special characters to - and lower case the text, so the string becomes :

vision---mission

now i need another replace to replace --- to -

Of course, that should be flexible. So for example when user inputs Vision& Mission (typo intended) the replacing will generate vision--mission (two dashes), so in that case I will need to replace -- to -

so basically I need a replace technique to replace an undetermined number of dashes to only 1 dash.

Thanks

Wait, are you trying to replace a single em-dash character (—), or three dash characters (---)? Your question and its title disagree. — Piskvor left the building
– Piskvor left the building, Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 9:10
three dash characters. must have been the auto formatting in title text. i inputted three dash characters in the title. — Henson
– Henson, Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 9:24
Hmm, looks like it: in the edit window, they are again three dashes. — Piskvor left the building
– Piskvor left the building, Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 16:47

glmxndr · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-21 11:02:38Z

8

Use replace with a regexp telling to replace all sequences of dashes by a single dash.

"my--string".replace(/-+/g, "-"); // => "my-string"

Note that you could do that from the beginning, when you replace all the special characters and spaces by a dash. For example, the regexp literal /[^a-z0-9]+/ig finds all sequences of non alphanumeric characters.

"Smith & Wesson".replace(/[^a-z0-9]+/ig, "-"); // => "Smith-Wesson"

Then you just need to .toLowerCase() your string...

edited Feb 21, 2011 at 11:02

answered Feb 21, 2011 at 8:59

glmxndr

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4 Comments

Henson Over a year ago

thanks! that's what i need. by the way what does /ig mean? g i assume is global right? so what is i?

glmxndr Over a year ago

The 'i' flag means case insensitive. If you didn't put it, you would need to write /[^A-Za-z0-9]+/ig (with explicit capital letters). 'g' flag is for global indeed.

Piskvor left the building Over a year ago

Are you sure that nothing éxčëpť a-zA-Z0-9 cóůld be an alphanumeric character? Poor Kurt Gödel - he'll become Kurt-G-del. Not all alphabetic characters are encoded by ASCII. +0 in total ;)

glmxndr Over a year ago

If the aim is to generate an ID without any accentuated character, you may use the code from this question before removing the special characters : stackoverflow.com/questions/990904/…

Alexey Lebedev · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-21 09:03:40Z

1

I think you can simplify your whole function:

yourString.toLowerCase().replace(/\W+/g, '-')

answered Feb 21, 2011 at 9:03

Alexey Lebedev

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