CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptreplace
Jean-Philippe Murray
Jean-Philippe Murray

Reputation: 1248

Delete a string in javascript, without leaving an empty space?

I've seen multiple instance of that kind of question, but not the one I'm looking for specifically... (I just hope I'm not hopelessly blind ! :P)

Let's consider this code:

var oneString = "This is a string";
document.write(oneString.replace("is", ""));

I would have assumed that the output would have been: 

This a string.

But this is the output I'm getting:

This a  string

It's like replace() think that the second argument sent is " " and not ""... What would be the proper manner then to strip the string of a given string, without having extra spaces floating in my output ?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1591

Answers (5)

Halcyon
Halcyon

Reputation: 57729

var aString = "This is a string";
var find = "is";    // or 'This' or 'string'
aString = aString.replace(new RegExp("(^|\\s+)" + find + "(\\s+|$)", "g"), "$1");
console.log(oneString);

The only case where this isn't perfect is when you replace the last word in the sentence. It will leave one space at the end, but I suppose you could check for that.

The g modifier is to make the replace replace all instances, and not just the first one.

Add the i modifier to make it case insensitive.

If you also want this to work on strings like:

"This has a comma, in it"

Change the regexp to:

var find = "comma";
new RegExp("(^|\\s+)" + find + "(\\s+|$|,)", "g")

Upvotes: 1

Hugo
Hugo

Reputation: 2601

You didn't include any spaces in your pattern. When I try your code in Chrome I get:

> "This is a string".replace("is","")
  "Th is a string"

One way to accomplish what you're trying would be to use a regexp instead:

> "This is a string".replace(/is\s/,"")
  "This a string"

Upvotes: 1

Retief
Retief

Reputation: 3217

Look at the original string - "This_is_a_string" (I replaced spaces with underscores). When you remove "is", you don't touch either of the surrounding spaces, so both end up in the output. What you need to do is oneString.replace("is","").replace(/ +/," ") -- get rid of "is" and then eliminate any double spaces. If you want to keep some double spaces, try oneString.replace(" is","") instead, though you will run into issues if the string starts with is (eg "is it safe?").

The best answer might be something like oneString.replace(/is ?/,"") to match is possibly followed by a space oroneString.replace(/ ?is ?/," ") to match is possibly surrounded by spaces, and replace all of them with one space.

Upvotes: 1

mfa
mfa

Reputation: 5087

Are you sure you're not getting "This a string"?

I think you should replace "is " with "" to get your desired output. There is a space before as well as after the word.

Upvotes: 1

Joachim Isaksson
Joachim Isaksson

Reputation: 180927

You are actually getting "is" replaced with an empty string, it's the space before and after the "is" you replace that stay around as the two spaces you see. Try;

oneString.replace("is ", "")

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions