I'm trying to do a replace on a string like this:
$('#example_id').replace(/abc123/g,'something else')
But the abc123 actually needs to be a variable.
So something like:
var old_string = 'abc123'
$('#example_id').replace(/old_string/g,'something else')
So how would I use a variable in the replace function?
First of $('#example_id') will give you a jQuery object, you must be replacing string inside its html or value. Try this.
var re = new RegExp("abc123","g");
$('#example_id').html($('#example_id').html().replace(re, "something else"));
There is another version of replace which takes a RegExp object. This object can be built up from a string literal:
var old_string = "abc123";
var myregexp = new RegExp(old_string,'g');
$('#example_id').replace(myregexp,'something else')
Some useful info here
You can create regular expression using constructor.
var re = new RegExp('abc123', 'g')
$('#example_id').replace(re,'something else')
Here is RegExp documentation.
For replacing element's inner html content you can use html method:
$('#example_id').html(function(i, s){return s.replace(re, 'replace with')})
Create a RegExp object:
var regexp = new RegExp(old_string, 'g');
$('#example_id').replace(regexp,'something else');
Edit: Fixed parameters
/ and the g should be the second argument. Javascript RegExp Object
(,),*,.,-, etc will need to be escaped or will probably break your replace.