Remove characters from a string

Question

What are the different ways I can remove characters from a string in JavaScript?

Answer 1

Using replace() with regular expressions is the most flexible/powerful. It's also the only way to globally replace every instance of a search pattern in JavaScript. The non-regex variant of replace() will only replace the first instance.

For example:

var str = "foo gar gaz";  // returns: "foo bar gaz" str.replace('g', 'b');  // returns: "foo bar baz" str = str.replace(/g/gi, 'b'); 

In the latter example, the trailing /gi indicates case-insensitivity and global replacement (meaning that not just the first instance should be replaced), which is what you typically want when you're replacing in strings.

To remove characters, use an empty string as the replacement:

var str = "foo bar baz";  // returns: "foo r z" str.replace(/ba/gi, ''); 

Answer 2

ONELINER which remove characters LIST (more than one at once) - for example remove +,-, ,(,) from telephone number:

var str = "+(48) 123-456-789".replace(/[-+()\s]/g, '');  // result: "48123456789" 

We use regular expression [-+()\s] where we put unwanted characters between [ and ]

(the "\s" is 'space' character escape - for more info google 'character escapes in in regexp')