how to remove trailing html break from string?

Question

I have a string below and I want to remove the trailing
but I'm struggling. Any help?

This is a string<br>    
next line<br>

So after my function, the string should be

This is a string<br>
next line

Doing this code below doesn't seem to be working. Well, it works but it doesn't clear out two trailing breaks.

mystring=mystring.replace(/<br>$/,'');

So if my string is actually:

This is a string<br>
next line<br>
<br>

then the code above just returns

This is a string<br>
next line
<br>

Felix Kling · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-08 19:58:43Z

14

If you want to remove all trailing  s, then use a quantifier:

/(<br>\s*)+$/

\s matches any white space characters, so even if there is line break between continuous  s, it will still match.

DEMO

edited Nov 8, 2011 at 19:58

answered Nov 8, 2011 at 19:52

Felix Kling

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1 Comment

manojchowdary27 Over a year ago

/(<br\s*\/?\s*>\s*)+$/ This handles more cases like , ,

Adam Terlson · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-08 19:48:54Z

1

If it's the contents of an HTML element, you can just use jQuery to remove the element:

$('#container').children('br').last().remove();

If it's a string, you can do something like this (still leveraging jQuery):

var cleaner = $('<div />').html(mystring);
cleaner.children('br:last-child').remove();
mystring = cleaner.html();

I prefer this over splitting on a string or your current RegEx because you're not handling the scenario of a BR tag like this:  .

http://jsfiddle.net/TTg3p/

edited Nov 8, 2011 at 19:48

answered Nov 8, 2011 at 19:41

Adam Terlson

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Comments

anorakgirl · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-08 19:51:08Z

0

I tested your code, and it seems to work. I pasted the following into a file and then viewed in firefox, and clicked view source. The second br was not visible in the source.

<html>
<body>
<script>
var mystring = 'This is a string<br>\n next line<br>'
mystring=mystring.replace(/<br>$/,''); 
document.write(mystring);
</script>
</html>

Perhaps your mystring variable has an actual linebreak (\n) at the end of it after the br, so your regular expression is not matching?

answered Nov 8, 2011 at 19:51

anorakgirl

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2 Comments

Mike Over a year ago

Yup. I just realized it's working. But my issue is with multiple trailing breaks. Doh.

Felix Kling Over a year ago

@Mike: So you want to remove all trailing  s? Then use a quantifier: /( \s*)+$/.

Martin Borthiry · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-08 20:10:33Z

0

Try this:

mystring.split('<br>').slice(0,-1).join('<br>');

demo :)

edited Nov 8, 2011 at 20:10

answered Nov 8, 2011 at 19:48

Martin Borthiry

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Comments

user670839 · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-15 20:09:08Z

0

If you want to remove the last trailing   inside an element, you can use this:

const element = document.getElementById('element')
console.log('Before:', element.innerHTML)

const last = element.childNodes[element.childNodes.length - 1]
if (last.tagName === 'BR') last.remove()
console.log('After:', element.innerHTML)

<div id="element">Some text<br>other text<br></div>

answered Apr 15, 2020 at 20:09

user670839

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