Ignore special characters in javascript

I want to remove all special characters except space from a string using JavaScript.

For example, abc's test#s should output as abcs tests.

asked Jul 2, 2011 at 4:52

2

You should use the string replace function, with a single regex. Assuming by special characters, you mean anything that's not letter, here is a solution:

const str = "abc's test#s";
console.log(str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z ]/g, ""));

SiddAjmera

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answered Jul 2, 2011 at 5:01

Petar IvanovPetar Ivanov

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6

You can do it specifying the characters you want to remove:

string = string.replace(/[&\/\\#,+()$~%.'":*?<>{}]/g, '');

Alternatively, to change all characters except numbers and letters, try:

string = string.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/g, '');

Pere

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answered Jun 4, 2013 at 9:13

6

The first solution does not work for any UTF-8 alphabet. (It will cut text such as Привіт). I have managed to create a function which does not use RegExp and use good UTF-8 support in the JavaScript engine. The idea is simple if a symbol is equal in uppercase and lowercase it is a special character. The only exception is made for whitespace.

function removeSpecials(str) {
    var lower = str.toLowerCase();
    var upper = str.toUpperCase();

    var res = "";
    for(var i=0; i<lower.length; ++i) {
        if(lower[i] != upper[i] || lower[i].trim() === '')
            res += str[i];
    }
    return res;
}

Update: Please note, that this solution works only for languages where there are small and capital letters. In languages like Chinese, this won't work.

Update 2: I came to the original solution when I was working on a fuzzy search. If you also trying to remove special characters to implement search functionality, there is a better approach. Use any transliteration library which will produce you string only from Latin characters and then the simple Regexp will do all magic of removing special characters. (This will work for Chinese also and you also will receive side benefits by making Tromsø == Tromso).

answered Oct 21, 2014 at 8:54

SeagullSeagull

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4

search all not (word characters || space):

str.replace(/[^\w ]/, '')

answered Jan 24, 2018 at 19:00

doviddovid

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2

I don't know JavaScript, but isn't it possible using regex?

Something like [^\w\d\s] will match anything but digits, characters and whitespaces. It would be just a question to find the syntax in JavaScript.

Jon

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answered Jul 2, 2011 at 5:02

Thiago MoraesThiago Moraes

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I tried Seagul's very creative solution, but found it treated numbers also as special characters, which did not suit my needs. So here is my (failsafe) tweak of Seagul's solution...

//return true if char is a number
function isNumber (text) {
  if(text) {
    var reg = new RegExp('[0-9]+$');
    return reg.test(text);
  }
  return false;
}

function removeSpecial (text) {
  if(text) {
    var lower = text.toLowerCase();
    var upper = text.toUpperCase();
    var result = "";
    for(var i=0; i<lower.length; ++i) {
      if(isNumber(text[i]) || (lower[i] != upper[i]) || (lower[i].trim() === '')) {
        result += text[i];
      }
    }
    return result;
  }
  return '';
}

answered Feb 17, 2016 at 11:45

MozfetMozfet

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1

Try to use this one

var result= stringToReplace.replace(/[^\w\s]/g, '')

[^] is for negation, \w for [a-zA-Z0-9_] word characters and \s for space, /[]/g for global

qtmfld

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answered Nov 18, 2019 at 15:26

ShrinivasanShrinivasan

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const str = "abc's@thy#^g&test#s";
console.log(str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z ]/g, ""));

answered Oct 10, 2020 at 23:59

3

With regular expression

let string  = "!#This tool removes $special *characters* /other/ than! digits, characters and spaces!!!$";

var NewString= string.replace(/[^\w\s]/gi, '');
console.log(NewString); 

Result //This tool removes special characters other than digits characters and spaces

Live Example : https://helpseotools.com/text-tools/remove-special-characters

answered Sep 6 at 9:30

M K GuptaM K Gupta

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dot (.) may not be considered special. I have added an OR condition to Mozfet's & Seagull's answer:

function isNumber (text) {
      reg = new RegExp('[0-9]+$');
      if(text) {
        return reg.test(text);
      }
      return false;
    }

function removeSpecial (text) {
  if(text) {
    var lower = text.toLowerCase();
    var upper = text.toUpperCase();
    var result = "";
    for(var i=0; i<lower.length; ++i) {
      if(isNumber(text[i]) || (lower[i] != upper[i]) || (lower[i].trim() === '') || (lower[i].trim() === '.')) {
        result += text[i];
      }
    }
    return result;
  }
  return '';
}

answered Dec 11, 2017 at 7:54

Try this:

const strippedString = htmlString.replace(/(<([^>]+)>)/gi, "");
console.log(strippedString);

Jared Forth

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answered Sep 10, 2020 at 14:32

1

const input = `#if_1 $(PR_CONTRACT_END_DATE) == '23-09-2019' # 
Test27919<> #elseif_1 $(PR_CONTRACT_START_DATE) ==  '20-09-2019' #
Sender539<> #elseif_1 $(PR_ACCOUNT_ID) == '1234' #
AdestraSID<> #else_1#Test27919<>#endif_1#`;
const replaceString = input.split('$(').join('->').split(')').join('<-');


console.log(replaceString.match(/(?<=->).*?(?=<-)/g));

answered Jan 16, 2020 at 10:10

Whose special characters you want to remove from a string, prepare a list of them and then user javascript replace function to remove all special characters.

var str = 'abc'de#;:sfjkewr47239847duifyh';
alert(str.replace("'","").replace("#","").replace(";","").replace(":",""));

or you can run loop for a whole string and compare single single character with the ASCII code and regenerate a new string.

answered Jul 2, 2011 at 4:58

Gaurav AgrawalGaurav Agrawal

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4

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