Javascript Remove strings in beginning and end

Question

base on the following string

...here..
..there...
.their.here.

How can i remove the . on the beginning and end of string like the trim that removes all spaces, using javascript

the output should be

here
there
their.here

Answer 1

These are the reasons why the RegEx for this task is /(^\.+|\.+$)/mg:

1. Inside /()/ is where you write the pattern of the substring you want to find in the string:

   /(ol)/ This will find the substring ol in the string.

   var x = "colt".replace(/(ol)/, 'a'); will give you x == "cat";

2. The ^\.+|\.+$ in /()/ is separated into 2 parts by the symbol | [means or]

   ^\.+ and \.+$

   1. ^\.+ means to find as many . as possible at the start.

      ^ means at the start; \ is to escape the character; adding + behind a character means to match any string containing one or more that character

   2. \.+$ means to find as many . as possible at the end.

      $ means at the end.

3. The m behind /()/ is used to specify that if the string has newline or carriage return characters, the ^ and $ operators will now match against a newline boundary, instead of a string boundary.

4. The g behind /()/ is used to perform a global match: so it find all matches rather than stopping after the first match.

To learn more about RegEx you can check out this guide.

Answer 2

Try to use the following regex

var text = '...here..\n..there...\n.their.here.';
var replaced =  text.replace(/(^\.+|\.+$)/mg, '');