Simple Javascript Replace not working [duplicate]

Question

This seems so simple and trivial but it is not working. Here is my javascript:

var url = "/computers/";
console.log(url);
url.replace(/\//gi, " ");
console.log(url);

And here is the output in my browsers console:

/computers/
/computers/

As you can see nothing changes. As you can tell from the code I'm trying to replace the forward slashes with spaces. What am I doing wrong?

galchen · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-02 14:49:56Z

21

url = url.replace(/\//gi, " ");

answered Jun 2, 2012 at 14:49

galchen

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4 Comments

man I feel a bit dumb. Thanks for that.

LoL. Epic. I just ran into this same issue and this answer saved me from emailing Brendan Eich to tell him that JS replace doesn't work :)

@greatwitenorth ㅋㅋㅋㅋ did the same mistake.

Gosh, was fighting for an hour with that. Feeling dumb as hell now. Thanks for saving me!

dda · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-02 14:51:06Z

2

Nothing changes because you're not assigning the result of the replacement to a variable. Add url = url.replace()

answered Jun 2, 2012 at 14:51

dda

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Esailija · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-02 14:51:23Z

0

url.replace(/\//gi, " "); returns the resulting string (in javascript you can't modify an existing string), you are not assigning it to anything

assign it like so:

url = url.replace(/\//gi, " ");

answered Jun 2, 2012 at 14:51

Esailija

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