Develop Reference

Format string and deleting special characters using ASCII code doesn't work (JavaScript)

Im trying to format any given string using ASCII code for reference. The format must delete any special character except numbers, "-" or "_" and spaces. Here's the code:
function FormatString(sentence) {
result = new String();
j = 0;
sentence = sentence.toUpperCase();
i = 0;
while(i < sentence.length) {
if (
(sentence[i]>=65 && sentence[i]<=90) ||
(sentence[i]>=48 && sentence[j]<=57) ||
sentence[i]==32 || sentence[i]==45
) {
sentence[j] = result[i];
j = j + 1;
}
i = i + 1;
}
return result;
}
and then call the function
console.log(FormatString('No running in the hallways!!!'))
the output should be "No running in the hallways"

Provided that using Regular Expressions would be the best way to solve your problem, I am assuming you want to use ASCII comparison for a reason.
The following solution works:
function FormatString (sentence) {
let result = "";
const uppercaseSentence = sentence.toUpperCase();
for (let i=0; i<uppercaseSentence.length; i++) {
let cc = uppercaseSentence.charCodeAt(i);
if ((cc>=65 && cc<=90) || (cc>=48 && cc<=57) || cc==32 || cc==45) {
result += sentence[i];
}
}
return result;
}
I am reporting below your function and commenting what was wrong with it:
function FormatString(sentence) {
// you are declaring a global variable here.
// let result = ... or var result = ... makes it local
// In javascript you can use an string literal `""` in place of new String()
result = new String();
// again a global variable
j = 0;
// you are chaning the passed parameter to an uppercase string
// you lost the original string now
sentence = sentence.toUpperCase();
// again a global variable
i = 0;
// nothing wron with the while loop, only the for loop is more concise in
// this case
while(i < sentence.length) {
if (
// sentence[i] is a streing with length 1 and it returns false if
// compared with a number. Use instead sentence.charCodeAt(i) which
// returns the ASCII code of the i-th character
(sentence[i]>=65 && sentence[i]<=90) ||
// there is a j here in place of an i
(sentence[i]>=48 && sentence[j]<=57) ||
sentence[i]==32 || sentence[i]==45
) {
// you can't assign single characters in javascript
// what you want to do is result += sentence[i],
// but remember that sentence is now all uppercase and so will be
// result!
sentence[j] = result[i];
j = j + 1;
}
i = i + 1;
}
return result;
}

Maybe string.replace with regex will help in your need:
const regex = /[-_]/g
"afasf-afsaf_fafa".replace(regex,''); //"afasfafsaffafa"

Any alternative way of using this .length & .split()?

I want to split lower, upper & also the value of textBox without using .split() and also I want
to find the length of the string without using .length. Can anybody solve my problem I am tried but
I cannot find the exact logic for this problem.
var lowercase = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
var uppercase = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
function Print() {
var input = document.getElementById('demo').value;
document.write(document.getElementById('demo1').innerHTML = toUpper(input));
}
function toUpper(input) {
var upperCase = uppercase.split(""); //other way to split uppercase
var lowerCase = lowercase.split(""); //other way to split lowercase
var inputText = input.split(""); //other way to split input
var newText = "";
var found;
for (var i = 0; i < inputText.length; i++) { //not using .length to other way to find the size of inputText
found = false;
for (var ctr = 0; ctr < lowerCase.length; ctr++) { //not using .length other way to find the size of lowerCase
if (inputText[i] == lowerCase[ctr]) {
found = true;
break;
}
}
if (found) { //true
newText = newText + upperCase[ctr];
} else {
newText = newText + inputText[i];
}
}
return newText;
}

You can count the length of a string using the array function reduce.
Reduce loops over all elements in an array and executes a function you give it to reduce it to one value, you can read more here.
To get reduce working on strings, you need to use Array.from, like this:
Array.from(lowerCase).reduce((sum, carry) => sum + 1, 0) // 26
Reduce accepts a starting argument, which we set to zero here.
This way you do not need to use the split or length functions.
You don't need to check if the input is in a string either, you can use charCodeAt() and fromCharCode().
If you take your input and loop through it using Array.from() then forEach, you can get something which looks like this:
function print() {
const input = document.querySelector('#input').value;
document.querySelector('#target').value = stringToUpper(input);
}
function stringToUpper(input) {
let output = "";
Array.from(input).forEach(char => output += charToUpper(char));
return output;
}
function charToUpper(char) {
let code = char.charCodeAt(0);
code >= 97 && code <= 122 ? code -= 32 : code;
return String.fromCharCode(code);
}
<div>
<input id="input" placeholder="enter text here">
</div>
<button onclick="print()">To Upper</button>
<div>
<input id="target">
</div>
The key line is where we take the output and add the char (as upper) to it:
output += charToUpper(char)
If you don't know about arrow functions, you can read more here
This line:
code >= 97 && code <= 122 ? code -= 32 : code;
is just checking if the char is lower case (number between 97 and 122) and if so, subtracting 32 to get it to upper case.
The reason it is subtract not add is in utf-16, the chars are laid out like this:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRTUWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrtuwxyz
See here for more

I don't know what you mean by "split the value of textBox", but one way to determine the length of a string without using .length would be to use a for...of loop and have a counter increment each time it runs to keep track of the number of characters in the string.
let string = 'boo'
let lengthCounter = 0
for (let char of string) {
lengthCounter++
}
//lengthCounter = 3
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/for...of

You can define your own split and length functions:
function mySplit(a){
var counter = 0;
rslt = [];
var val = a[counter];
while(typeof val != "undefined"){
rslt.push(a[counter]);
counter ++;
val = a[counter];
}
return rslt;
}
function myLength(a){
var counter = 0;
var val = a[counter];
while(typeof val != "undefined"){
counter ++;
val = a[counter];
}
return counter;
}
Your function now should be like:
function toUpper(input) {
var upperCase = mySplit(uppercase);
var lowerCase = mySplit(lowercase);
var inputText = mySplit(input);
var newText = "";
var found;
for (var i = 0; i < myLength(inputText); i++) {
found = false;
for (var ctr = 0; ctr < myLength(lowerCase); ctr++) {
if (inputText[i] == lowerCase[ctr]) {
found = true;
break;
}
}
if (found) { //true
newText = newText + upperCase[ctr];
} else {
newText = newText + inputText[i];
}
}
return newText;
}

The simplest way would be to just use the build in function of javascript .toUpperCase() (see example 1). https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/toUpperCase
Else if you insist on using a for.loop you may do so aswell (see example two). You do not need the split() function since a string already is an arrayof characters. Also be aware that not all characters in the web have lowercase counterparts, so the logic itself is flawed.
//REM: This lines are not required.
/*
var lowercase = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
var uppercase = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
function Print() {
var input = document.getElementById('demo').value;
document.write(document.getElementById('demo1').innerHTML = toUpper(input));
}
*/
//REM: Version 1 (using string.toUpperCase())
(function toUpper1(input){
var tReturn = (input || '').toUpperCase();
console.log('toUpper1', tReturn);
return tReturn
}('abcDEFghiJKL'));
//REM: Version 2 (using your way)
(function toUpper2(input){
var tReturn = '';
if(input && input.length){
for(let i=0, j=input.length; i<j; i++){
tReturn += (input[i] === input[i].toLowerCase()) ? input[i].toUpperCase() : input[i]
}
};
console.log('toUpper2', tReturn);
return tReturn
}('abcDEFghiJKL'));

“str.fromCharCode is not a function”

Im getting the following errors:
str.fromCharCode is not a function
newStr.push is not a function
I have no clue why I’m getting those errors tbh. I might be using methods the wrong way
function rot13(str) {
var newStr = str;
for (i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
str.fromCharCode(str[i] - 13);
newStr.push(i);
}
return newStr;
}
// Change the inputs below to test
console.log(
rot13("SERR PBQR PNZC")
)

You could try something like:
function rot13(str) {
var newStr = [];
for(i = 0; i < str.length; i++){
let x = String.fromCharCode(str[i].charCodeAt()-13);
newStr.push(x);
}
return newStr.join("");
}

It is String.fromCharCode, not myString.fromCharCode
Lastly you want charCodeAt to subtract from
Also you cannot push a char to a string. push is an Array method
function rot13(str) {
var newStr = []; // using an array - you can use += to concatenate to string
for (i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
// I suggest you do not convert the space.
// Here I converted it to another type of space but you can use " " if you want
var x = str[i] == " " ? "\u2005":String.fromCharCode(str[i].charCodeAt(0) - 13);
newStr.push(x);
}
return newStr.join("");
}
// Change the inputs below to test
console.log(
rot13("SERR PBQR PNZC")
)

Javascript Function to split and return a value from a string

I am trying to grab a certain value. I am new to javascript and I can't figure out why this is not working.
If I parse "kid_2" I should get "kostas". Instead of "Kostas" I always get "02-23-2000". So I must have a logic problem in the loop but I am really stuck.
function getold_val(fieldname,str){
var chunks=str.split("||");
var allchunks = chunks.length-1;
for(k=0;k<allchunks;k++){
var n=str.indexOf(fieldname);
alert(chunks[k]);
if(n>0){
var chunkd=chunks[k].split("::");
alert(chunkd);
return chunkd[1];
}
}
}
var test = getold_val('kid_2','date_1::02-23-2000||date_2::06-06-1990||kid_1::George||kid_2::Kostas||');
alert(test);

A regex may be a little more appealing. Here's a fiddle:
function getValue(source, key){
return (new RegExp("(^|\\|)" + key + "::([^$\\|]+)", "i").exec(source) || {})[2];
}
getValue("date_1::02-23-2000||date_2::06-06-1990||kid_1::George||kid_2::Kostas||","kid_2");
But if you want something a little more involved, you can parse that string into a dictionary like so (fiddle):
function splitToDictionary(val, fieldDelimiter, valueDelimiter){
var dict = {},
fields = val.split(fieldDelimiter),
kvp;
for (var i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
if (fields[i] !== "") {
kvp = fields[i].split(valueDelimiter);
dict[kvp[0]] = kvp[1];
}
}
return dict;
}
var dict = splitToDictionary("date_1::02-23-2000||date_2::06-06-1990||kid_1::George||kid_2::Kostas||","||","::");
console.log(dict["date_1"]);
console.log(dict["date_2"]);
console.log(dict["kid_1"]);
console.log(dict["kid_2"]);​

This works, here's my fiddle.
function getold_val(fieldname,str) {
var chunks = str.split('||');
for(var i = 0; i < chunks.length-1; i++) {
if(chunks[i].indexOf(fieldname) >= 0) {
return(chunks[i].substring(fieldname.length+2));
}
}
}
alert(getold_val('kid_2', 'date_1::02-23-2000||date_2::06-06-1990||kid_1::George||kid_2::Kostas||'));
The issue with your code was (as #slebetman noticed as well) the fact that a string index can be 0 because it starts exactly in the first letter.
The code is almost the same as yours, I just didn't use the second .split('::') because I felt a .substring(...) would be easier.

There are two bugs. The first error is in the indexOf call:
var n = str.indexOf(fieldname);
This will always return a value greater than or equal to 0 since the field exists in the string. What you should be doing is:
var n = chunks[k].indexOf(fieldname);
The second error is in your if statement. It should be:
if(n >= 0) {
...
}
or
if(n > -1) {
...
}
The substring you are looking for could very well be the at the beginning of the string, in which case its index is 0. indexOf returns -1 if it cannot find what you're looking for.
That being said, here's a better way to do what you're trying to do:
function getold_val(fieldName, str) {
var keyValuePairs = str.split("||");
var returnValue = null;
if(/||$/.match(str)) {
keyValuePairs = keyValuePairs.slice(0, keyValuePairs.length - 1);
}
var found = false;
var i = 0;
while(i < keyValuePairs.length && !found) {
var keyValuePair = keyValuePairs[i].split("::");
var key = keyValuePair[0];
var value = keyValuePair[1];
if(fieldName === key) {
returnValue = value;
found = true;
}
i++;
}
return returnValue;
}

JavaScript strings outside of the BMP

BMP being Basic Multilingual Plane
According to JavaScript: the Good Parts:
JavaScript was built at a time when Unicode was a 16-bit character set, so all characters in JavaScript are 16 bits wide.
This leads me to believe that JavaScript uses UCS-2 (not UTF-16!) and can only handle characters up to U+FFFF.
Further investigation confirms this:
> String.fromCharCode(0x20001);
The fromCharCode method seems to only use the lowest 16 bits when returning the Unicode character. Trying to get U+20001 (CJK unified ideograph 20001) instead returns U+0001.
Question: is it at all possible to handle post-BMP characters in JavaScript?
2011-07-31: slide twelve from Unicode Support Shootout: The Good, The Bad, & the (mostly) Ugly covers issues related to this quite well:

Depends what you mean by ‘support’. You can certainly put non-UCS-2 characters in a JS string using surrogates, and browsers will display them if they can.
But, each item in a JS string is a separate UTF-16 code unit. There is no language-level support for handling full characters: all the standard String members (length, split, slice etc) all deal with code units not characters, so will quite happily split surrogate pairs or hold invalid surrogate sequences.
If you want surrogate-aware methods, I'm afraid you're going to have to start writing them yourself! For example:
String.prototype.getCodePointLength= function() {
return this.length-this.split(/[\uD800-\uDBFF][\uDC00-\uDFFF]/g).length+1;
};
String.fromCodePoint= function() {
var chars= Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);
for (var i= chars.length; i-->0;) {
var n = chars[i]-0x10000;
if (n>=0)
chars.splice(i, 1, 0xD800+(n>>10), 0xDC00+(n&0x3FF));
}
return String.fromCharCode.apply(null, chars);
};

I came to the same conclusion as bobince. If you want to work with strings containing unicode characters outside of the BMP, you have to reimplement javascript's String methods. This is because javascript counts characters as each 16-bit code value. Symbols outside of the BMP need two code values to be represented. You therefore run into a case where some symbols count as two characters and some count only as one.
I've reimplemented the following methods to treat each unicode code point as a single character: .length, .charCodeAt, .fromCharCode, .charAt, .indexOf, .lastIndexOf, .splice, and .split.
You can check it out on jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/Y89Du/
Here's the code without comments. I tested it, but it may still have errors. Comments are welcome.
if (!String.prototype.ucLength) {
String.prototype.ucLength = function() {
// this solution was taken from
// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3744721/javascript-strings-outside-of-the-bmp
return this.length - this.split(/[\uD800-\uDBFF][\uDC00-\uDFFF]/g).length + 1;
};
}
if (!String.prototype.codePointAt) {
String.prototype.codePointAt = function (ucPos) {
if (isNaN(ucPos)){
ucPos = 0;
}
var str = String(this);
var codePoint = null;
var pairFound = false;
var ucIndex = -1;
var i = 0;
while (i < str.length){
ucIndex += 1;
var code = str.charCodeAt(i);
var next = str.charCodeAt(i + 1);
pairFound = (0xD800 <= code && code <= 0xDBFF && 0xDC00 <= next && next <= 0xDFFF);
if (ucIndex == ucPos){
codePoint = pairFound ? ((code - 0xD800) * 0x400) + (next - 0xDC00) + 0x10000 : code;
break;
} else{
i += pairFound ? 2 : 1;
}
}
return codePoint;
};
}
if (!String.fromCodePoint) {
String.fromCodePoint = function () {
var strChars = [], codePoint, offset, codeValues, i;
for (i = 0; i < arguments.length; ++i) {
codePoint = arguments[i];
offset = codePoint - 0x10000;
if (codePoint > 0xFFFF){
codeValues = [0xD800 + (offset >> 10), 0xDC00 + (offset & 0x3FF)];
} else{
codeValues = [codePoint];
}
strChars.push(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, codeValues));
}
return strChars.join("");
};
}
if (!String.prototype.ucCharAt) {
String.prototype.ucCharAt = function (ucIndex) {
var str = String(this);
var codePoint = str.codePointAt(ucIndex);
var ucChar = String.fromCodePoint(codePoint);
return ucChar;
};
}
if (!String.prototype.ucIndexOf) {
String.prototype.ucIndexOf = function (searchStr, ucStart) {
if (isNaN(ucStart)){
ucStart = 0;
}
if (ucStart < 0){
ucStart = 0;
}
var str = String(this);
var strUCLength = str.ucLength();
searchStr = String(searchStr);
var ucSearchLength = searchStr.ucLength();
var i = ucStart;
while (i < strUCLength){
var ucSlice = str.ucSlice(i,i+ucSearchLength);
if (ucSlice == searchStr){
return i;
}
i++;
}
return -1;
};
}
if (!String.prototype.ucLastIndexOf) {
String.prototype.ucLastIndexOf = function (searchStr, ucStart) {
var str = String(this);
var strUCLength = str.ucLength();
if (isNaN(ucStart)){
ucStart = strUCLength - 1;
}
if (ucStart >= strUCLength){
ucStart = strUCLength - 1;
}
searchStr = String(searchStr);
var ucSearchLength = searchStr.ucLength();
var i = ucStart;
while (i >= 0){
var ucSlice = str.ucSlice(i,i+ucSearchLength);
if (ucSlice == searchStr){
return i;
}
i--;
}
return -1;
};
}
if (!String.prototype.ucSlice) {
String.prototype.ucSlice = function (ucStart, ucStop) {
var str = String(this);
var strUCLength = str.ucLength();
if (isNaN(ucStart)){
ucStart = 0;
}
if (ucStart < 0){
ucStart = strUCLength + ucStart;
if (ucStart < 0){ ucStart = 0;}
}
if (typeof(ucStop) == 'undefined'){
ucStop = strUCLength - 1;
}
if (ucStop < 0){
ucStop = strUCLength + ucStop;
if (ucStop < 0){ ucStop = 0;}
}
var ucChars = [];
var i = ucStart;
while (i < ucStop){
ucChars.push(str.ucCharAt(i));
i++;
}
return ucChars.join("");
};
}
if (!String.prototype.ucSplit) {
String.prototype.ucSplit = function (delimeter, limit) {
var str = String(this);
var strUCLength = str.ucLength();
var ucChars = [];
if (delimeter == ''){
for (var i = 0; i < strUCLength; i++){
ucChars.push(str.ucCharAt(i));
}
ucChars = ucChars.slice(0, 0 + limit);
} else{
ucChars = str.split(delimeter, limit);
}
return ucChars;
};
}

More recent JavaScript engines have String.fromCodePoint.
const ideograph = String.fromCodePoint( 0x20001 ); // outside the BMP
Also a code-point iterator, which gets you the code-point length.
function countCodePoints( str )
{
const i = str[Symbol.iterator]();
let count = 0;
while( !i.next().done ) ++count;
return count;
}
console.log( ideograph.length ); // gives '2'
console.log( countCodePoints(ideograph) ); // '1'

Yes, you can. Although support to non-BMP characters directly in source documents is optional according to the ECMAScript standard, modern browsers let you use them. Naturally, the document encoding must be properly declared, and for most practical purposes you would need to use the UTF-8 encoding. Moreover, you need an editor that can handle UTF-8, and you need some input method(s); see e.g. my Full Unicode Input utility.
Using suitable tools and settings, you can write var foo = '𠀁'.
The non-BMP characters will be internally represented as surrogate pairs, so each non-BMP character counts as 2 in the string length.

Using for (c of this) instruction, one can make various computations on a string that contains non-BMP characters. For instance, to compute the string length, and to get the nth character of the string:
String.prototype.magicLength = function()
{
var c, k;
k = 0;
for (c of this) // iterate each char of this
{
k++;
}
return k;
}
String.prototype.magicCharAt = function(n)
{
var c, k;
k = 0;
for (c of this) // iterate each char of this
{
if (k == n) return c + "";
k++;
}
return "";
}

This old topic has now a simple solution in ES6:
Split characters into an array
simple version
[..."😴😄😃⛔🎠🚓🚇"] // ["😴", "😄", "😃", "⛔", "🎠", "🚓", "🚇"]
Then having each one separated you can handle them easily for most common cases.
Credit: DownGoat
Full solution
To overcome special emojis as the one in the comment, one can search for the connection charecter (char code 8205 in UTF-16) and make some modifications. Here is how:
let myStr = "👩‍👩‍👧‍👧😃𝌆"
let arr = [...myStr]
for (i = arr.length-1; i--; i>= 0) {
if (arr[i].charCodeAt(0) == 8205) { // special combination character
arr[i-1] += arr[i] + arr[i+1]; // combine them back to a single emoji
arr.splice(i, 2)
}
}
console.log(arr.length) //3
Haven't found a case where this doesn't work. Comment if you do.
To conclude
it seems that JS uses the 8205 char code to represent UCS-2 characters as a UTF-16 combinations.