Regular Expression for ignoring a string in javascript

Question

Im building a query to submit to a search, one of the input fields is a filter for "OR". I need to replace whitespace with +OR+..only if the whitespace occurs outside of quoted text. So this is the logic:

"Happy Days"+OR+"Love Boat"

I have working code that will do that here:

var filter2=$('[name=filter2]').val();
var str2 = jQuery.trim(filter2);
var filter2d = str2.replace(/" "/g, "\"+OR+\"");

This only works if the text has quotes..I would like to be able to do this as well:

fonzy+OR+"Happy Days"+OR+"Love Boat"

Any help is appreciated

Dave Aaron Smith · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-29 16:31:15Z

1

You can do it like this too.

'"abc def" ghi "klmno pqr"'.match(/"[^"]*"|[^\s]+/g).join("+OR+");

answered Mar 29, 2011 at 16:31

Dave Aaron Smith

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HBP · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-29 16:43:53Z

1

Nailed it:

var input = '"abc def" ghi "klmno pqr" xyz';
input.replace (/("[^"]*"|\w+)(\s+|$)/g,'$1+OR+').slice (0,-4) ===
'"abc def"+OR+ghi+OR+"klmno pqr"+OR+xyz'

This assumes that your quoted strings contain no quote characters.

edited Mar 29, 2011 at 16:43

answered Mar 29, 2011 at 16:23

HBP

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3 Comments

HBP Over a year ago

Darn, missed that extra +OR+in the final string

Dave Aaron Smith Over a year ago

I would use [^"] instead of \w in case fon$y is valid.

Dave Aaron Smith Over a year ago

Oh, also, I don't think you need to worry about trailing space because of var str2 = jQuery.trim(filter2);

Jmoney38 · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-29 16:33:40Z

0

This should do it...

function replaceWhiteSpace(str)
{
  insideAQuote = false;
  len = str.length
  for (i=0; i < len; i++)
  {
    if (str.charAt(i) == '"')
    {
      insideAQuote = !insideAQuote;
    }
    else if (str.charAt(i) == ' ' && !insideAQuote)
    {
      str = str.substr(0, i) + "+OR+" + str.substr(i+1);
    }
  }
  alert(str);
}

answered Mar 29, 2011 at 16:33

Jmoney38

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1 Comment

Jmoney38 Over a year ago

Looking back, I noticed your title said that you're looking for a regex... Oops, sorry. This will work regardless, and I bet it's faster too.

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