Javascript - string.replace() text spanning multiple lines?

Question

Let's say I have text (not html), that I'm pulling from a textarea. It looks like:

ALTER LOGIN [user1] DISABLE 

GO 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ important stuff to keep ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ important stuff to keep ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ important stuff to keep ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 


ALTER LOGIN [user2] DISABLE 

GO

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ important stuff to keep ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ important stuff to keep ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ important stuff to keep ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm trying to delete from ALTER to GO for each user. With replace(), I can replace from ALTER to DISABLE, but I can't quite figure out how to match all the way to GO (which is on the next line), so that it removes the whole chunk. Thoughts?

Answer 1

. in a regex matches every character except \n. In some regex flavours, you can add the s flag to make it match them, but not in Javascript.

Instead, you can use the [\s\S] character class, which matches all whitespace and all non whitespace, which is everything. The ? after * means it won't be greedy, otherwise it will match between the first ALTER and the last GO.

str = str.replace(/ALTER[\s\S]*?GO/g, '');

jsFiddle.