How to replace curly quotation marks in a string using Javascript?

Question

I am trying to replace curly quotes:

str = '“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.';

Using:

str.replace(/['"]/g,'');

Why it does not work? How can I do this?

Answer 1

You might have to (or prefer to) use Unicode escapes:

var goodQuotes = badQuotes.replace(/[\u2018\u2019]/g, "'");

That's for funny single quotes; the codes for double quotes are 201C and 201D.

edit — thus to completely replace all the fancy quotes:

var goodQuotes = badQuotes
  .replace(/[\u2018\u2019]/g, "'")
  .replace(/[\u201C\u201D]/g, '"');

Answer 2

It doesn't work because you're trying to replace the ASCII apostrophe (or single-quote) and quote characters with the empty string, when what's actually in your source string aren't ASCII characters.

str.replace(/[“”‘’]/g,'');

works.