I have a string with multiple commas, and the string replace method will only change the first one:
var mystring = "this,is,a,test"
mystring.replace(",","newchar", -1)
Result: "thisnewcharis,a,test"
The documentation indicates that the default replaces all, and that "-1" also indicates to replace all, but it is unsuccessful. Any thoughts?
The third parameter of the String.prototype.replace() function was never defined as a standard, so most browsers simply do not implement it. It was eventually removed and replaced with String.prototype.replaceAll() (see below).
Use String.prototype.replaceAll(). It is now supported in all browsers and NodeJS.
var myStr = "this,is,a,test";
var newStr = myStr.replaceAll(",", "-");
console.log( newStr ); // "this-is-a-test"g (global) flagvar myStr = "this,is,a,test";
var newStr = myStr.replace(/,/g, "-");
console.log( newStr ); // "this-is-a-test"It is important to note, that regular expressions use special characters that need to be escaped. For example, if you need to escape a dot (.) character, you should use /\./ literal, as in the regex syntax a dot matches any single character (except line terminators).
If you need to pass a variable as a replacement string, instead of using regex literal you may create a RegExp object and pass a string as its first argument. The usual escape rules (preceding special characters with \ when included in a string) will be necessary.
function escapeRegex(str) {
return str.replace(/[.*+?^${}()|[\]\\]/g, "\\$&"); // $& means the whole matched string
}
var myStr = "this.is.a.test";
var reStr = escapeRegex(".");
var newStr = myStr.replace(new RegExp(reStr, "g"), "-");
console.log( newStr ); // "this-is-a-test"
/\\/g and it will work.Just for fun:
var mystring = "this,is,a,test"
var newchar = '|'
mystring = mystring.split(',').join(newchar);
replace function with dots '.' but it doesn't work as expected, but you answer made it good
\. Example: var mystring = "this.,.is.,.a.,.test"; mystring.replace(/\./g , "|"); See MDN RegExp - Special characters meaning in regular expressions
var mystring = "this,is,a,test"
mystring.replace(/,/g, "newchar");
Use the global(g) flag
.) has a special meaning, it means every char, and like all other special chars, needs to be escaped with ` if you want to use their value "literally". if you want to replace only dots you need to use \.`.