CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptarraysmultidimensional-array
JPaulPunzalan
JPaulPunzalan

Reputation: 427

Backslash bug in JavaScript

I have a string that involves tricky \\ characters.

Below is the initial code, and what I am literally trying to achieve but it is not working. I have to replace the \" characters but I think that is where the bug is.

var current = csvArray[0][i].Replace("\"", "");

I have tried the variation below but it is still not working.

var current = csvArray[0][i].Replace('\"', '');

It is currently throwing an Uncaught TypeError: csvArray[0][i].Replace is not a function

Is there a way for Javascript to take my string ("\"") literally like in C#? Kindly help me investigate. Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 186

Answers (1)

nnnnnn
nnnnnn

Reputation: 150030

If the sequence you want to match is a single backslash character followed by a quotation mark, then you need to escape the backslash itself because backslashes have special meaning in string literals. You then need to separately escape the quotation mark with its own backslash:

.replace("\\\"", "")

I believe that would also be true in C#.

Or you can simplify it by using single quotes around the string so that only the backslash needs to be escaped:

.replace('\\"', '')

If the first argument to .replace() is a string, however, it will only replace the first occurrence. To do a global replace you have to use a regular expression with the g flag, noting that backslashes need to be escaped in regular expressions too:

.replace(/\\"/g, '')

I'm not going to setup a demo array to exactly match your code, but here's a simple demo where you can see that a lone backslash or quote in the input string are not replaced, but all backslash-quote combinations are replaced:

var input = 'Some\\ test" \\" text \\" for demo \\"'
var output = input.replace(/\\"/g, '')
console.log(input)
console.log(output)

Upvotes: 1

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