CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregexreplace
van_folmert
van_folmert

Reputation: 4507

How to replace first character only for matched regex?

regOpenTags = new RegExp("<+[a-zA-Z]", "g");

matches html opening tags (e.g. <body>) without matching closing tags (e.g. </body>).

I'd like to replace the first character of matched tags which is <, but doing

parsedString = string.replace(regOpenTags, '');

would replace also the first letter. In other words, when using replace() on a string containing <body>, I'd prefer to get body> instead of ody>.

How can I use the replace() method or regex to achieve this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 5049

Answers (1)

hwnd
hwnd

Reputation: 70722

You can use a Positive Lookahead to achieve this.

regOpenTags = new RegExp("<(?=[a-z])", "gi");

Regular expression

<             '<'
(?=           look ahead to see if there is:
 [a-z]        any character of: 'a' to 'z'
)             end of look-ahead

See working demo

Another way of using a Positive Lookahead with negation.

regOpenTags = new RegExp("<(?=[^/])", "g");

Upvotes: 3

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