Develop Reference

Recombine capture groups in single regexp?

I am trying to handle input groups similar to:
'...A.B.' and want to output '.....AB'.
Another example:
'.C..Z..B.' ==> '......CZB'
I have been working with the following:
'...A.B.'.replace(/(\.*)([A-Z]*)/g, "$1")
returns:
"....."
and
'...A.B.'.replace(/(\.*)([A-Z]*)/g, "$2")
returns:
"AB"
but
'...A.B.'.replace(/(\.*)([A-Z]*)/g, "$1$2")
returns
"...A.B."
Is there a way to return
"....AB"
with a single regexp?
I have only been able to accomplish this with:
'...A.B.'.replace(/(\.*)([A-Z]*)/g, "$1") + '...A.B.'.replace(/(\.*)([A-Z]*)/g, "$2")
==> ".....AB"

If the goal is to move all of the . to the beginning and all of the A-Z to the end, then I believe the answer to
with a single regexp?
is "no."
Separately, I don't think there's a simpler, more efficient way than two replace calls — but not the two you've shown. Instead:
var str = "...A..B...C.";
var result = str.replace(/[A-Z]/g, "") + str.replace(/\./g, "");
console.log(result);
(I don't know what you want to do with non-., non-A-Z characters, so I've ignored them.)
If you really want to do it with a single call to replace (e.g., a single pass through the string matters), you can, but I'm fairly sure you'd have to use the function callback and state variables:
var str = "...A..B...C.";
var dots = "";
var nondots = "";
var result = str.replace(/\.|[A-Z]|$/g, function(m) {
if (!m) {
// Matched the end of input; return the
// strings we've been building up
return dots + nondots;
}
// Matched a dot or letter, add to relevant
// string and return nothing
if (m === ".") {
dots += m;
} else {
nondots += m;
}
return "";
});
console.log(result);
That is, of course, incredibly ugly. :-)

How to clean string from word characters, Javascript

I'm trying to clean strings which has been transformed from word text but I'm stuck on removing special character '…'
By click on button "clean", script removes all dots and only one special character, however I need to remove all of them
Where is my mistake?
Here is my code and plunker with struggles
$scope.string = "My transformed string ………….........…...."
$scope.removeDots = function () {
var em = document.getElementsByTagName('em');
var reg = /\./g;
var hellip = /…/g
angular.forEach(em, function (item) {
if(item.innerText.match(reg)){
item.innerText = process(item.innerText)
}
if (item.innerText.match(hellip)){
item.innerText = item.innerText.replace("…", "")
}
});
};
function process( str ) {
return str.replace( /^([^.]*\.)(.*)$/, function ( a, b, c ) {
return b + c.replace( /\./g, '' );
});
}

There's a few problems here, but they can all be resolved by simply reducing the code to a single regex replace within process that will handle both periods and … entities:
$scope.removeDots = function () {
var em = document.getElementsByTagName('em');
angular.forEach(em, function (item) {
item.innerText = process(item.innerText)
});
};
function process( str ) {
return str.replace( /\.|…/g, '');
}
});
Plunker demo

You replace every occurrence of . in process, but only replace … once.
I don't see why don't you just do something like .replace(/(\.|…)/g, ''); the g modifier makes sure every match is replaced.

You can do both replacements by first replacing the occurrences of … with one point (because it might be the only thing you find), and then replacing any sequence of points by one:
function process( str ) {
return str.replace(/…/g, '.').replace(/\.\.+/g, '.');
}
var test="My transformed string ………….........…....";
console.log(process(test));
One of the reasons your code did not replace everything, is that you used a string as find argument, which will result in one replacement only. By using the regular expression as find argument you can get the effect of the g modifier.

Remove all dots except the first one from a string

Given a string
'1.2.3.4.5'
I would like to get this output
'1.2345'
(In case there are no dots in the string, the string should be returned unchanged.)
I wrote this
function process( input ) {
var index = input.indexOf( '.' );
if ( index > -1 ) {
input = input.substr( 0, index + 1 ) +
input.slice( index ).replace( /\./g, '' );
}
return input;
}
Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/EDTNK/1/
It works but I was hoping for a slightly more elegant solution...

There is a pretty short solution (assuming input is your string):
var output = input.split('.');
output = output.shift() + '.' + output.join('');
If input is "1.2.3.4", then output will be equal to "1.234".
See this jsfiddle for a proof. Of course you can enclose it in a function, if you find it necessary.
EDIT:
Taking into account your additional requirement (to not modify the output if there is no dot found), the solution could look like this:
var output = input.split('.');
output = output.shift() + (output.length ? '.' + output.join('') : '');
which will leave eg. "1234" (no dot found) unchanged. See this jsfiddle for updated code.

It would be a lot easier with reg exp if browsers supported look behinds.
One way with a regular expression:
function process( str ) {
return str.replace( /^([^.]*\.)(.*)$/, function ( a, b, c ) {
return b + c.replace( /\./g, '' );
});
}

You can try something like this:
str = str.replace(/\./,"#").replace(/\./g,"").replace(/#/,".");
But you have to be sure that the character # is not used in the string; or replace it accordingly.
Or this, without the above limitation:
str = str.replace(/^(.*?\.)(.*)$/, function($0, $1, $2) {
return $1 + $2.replace(/\./g,"");
});

You could also do something like this, i also don't know if this is "simpler", but it uses just indexOf, replace and substr.
var str = "7.8.9.2.3";
var strBak = str;
var firstDot = str.indexOf(".");
str = str.replace(/\./g,"");
str = str.substr(0,firstDot)+"."+str.substr(1,str.length-1);
document.write(str);
Shai.

Here is another approach:
function process(input) {
var n = 0;
return input.replace(/\./g, function() { return n++ > 0 ? '' : '.'; });
}
But one could say that this is based on side effects and therefore not really elegant.

This isn't necessarily more elegant, but it's another way to skin the cat:
var process = function (input) {
var output = input;
if (typeof input === 'string' && input !== '') {
input = input.split('.');
if (input.length > 1) {
output = [input.shift(), input.join('')].join('.');
}
}
return output;
};

Not sure what is supposed to happen if "." is the first character, I'd check for -1 in indexOf, also if you use substr once might as well use it twice.
if ( index != -1 ) {
input = input.substr( 0, index + 1 ) + input.substr(index + 1).replace( /\./g, '' );
}

var i = s.indexOf(".");
var result = s.substr(0, i+1) + s.substr(i+1).replace(/\./g, "");
Somewhat tricky. Works using the fact that indexOf returns -1 if the item is not found.

Trying to keep this as short and readable as possible, you can do the following:
JavaScript
var match = string.match(/^[^.]*\.|[^.]+/g);
string = match ? match.join('') : string;
Requires a second line of code, because if match() returns null, we'll get an exception trying to call join() on null. (Improvements welcome.)
Objective-J / Cappuccino (superset of JavaScript)
string = [string.match(/^[^.]*\.|[^.]+/g) componentsJoinedByString:''] || string;
Can do it in a single line, because its selectors (such as componentsJoinedByString:) simply return null when sent to a null value, rather than throwing an exception.
As for the regular expression, I'm matching all substrings consisting of either (a) the start of the string + any potential number of non-dot characters + a dot, or (b) any existing number of non-dot characters. When we join all matches back together, we have essentially removed any dot except the first.

var input = '14.1.2';
reversed = input.split("").reverse().join("");
reversed = reversed.replace(\.(?=.*\.), '' );
input = reversed.split("").reverse().join("");

Based on #Tadek's answer above. This function takes other locales into consideration.
For example, some locales will use a comma for the decimal separator and a period for the thousand separator (e.g. -451.161,432e-12).
First we convert anything other than 1) numbers; 2) negative sign; 3) exponent sign into a period ("-451.161.432e-12").
Next we split by period (["-451", "161", "432e-12"]) and pop out the right-most value ("432e-12"), then join with the rest ("-451161.432e-12")
(Note that I'm tossing out the thousand separators, but those could easily be added in the join step (.join(','))
var ensureDecimalSeparatorIsPeriod = function (value) {
var numericString = value.toString();
var splitByDecimal = numericString.replace(/[^\d.e-]/g, '.').split('.');
if (splitByDecimal.length < 2) {
return numericString;
}
var rightOfDecimalPlace = splitByDecimal.pop();
return splitByDecimal.join('') + '.' + rightOfDecimalPlace;
};

let str = "12.1223....1322311..";
let finStr = str.replace(/(\d*.)(.*)/, '$1') + str.replace(/(\d*.)(.*)/, '$2').replace(/\./g,'');
console.log(finStr)

const [integer, ...decimals] = '233.423.3.32.23.244.14...23'.split('.');
const result = [integer, decimals.join('')].join('.')
Same solution offered but using the spread operator.
It's a matter of opinion but I think it improves readability.

preg_match to Javascript function

$value = 077283331111333;
if( ! preg_match(/^[0-9]{1,20}+$/, $value))
{
echo $value . " is not a number that has between 1,20 digits";
}
I'm trying to turn this Php conditional statement into a Javascript one.
This is what I have, currently not working.
var value = 077283331111333;
var regex = '/^[0-9]{1,20}+$/';
var match = regex.test(value);
if ( ! match) {
console.log(value + 'is not a number that has between 1,20 digits');
}
And this is the error I'm getting.
Object /^[1,0]{1}+$//^[0-9]{1,20}+$/ has no method 'test'
Any ideas? Additionally this within a node.js environment.

That method is undefined because that's not a regex but a string.
You need to drop the quotes in order to create a RegExp object in javascript:
var regex = /^[1,0]{1}+$//^[0-9]{1,20}+$/;
Anyway I don't think that's a valid regex (because of the double slashes) you might wanna check for typos there...
A regex to check for a number between 1 and 20 digits is just:
var regex = /^\d{1,20}$/

try to remove single quotes from your regex
var value = 077283331111333;
var regex = /^[1,0]{1}+$//^[0-9]{1,20}+$/;
var match = regex.test(value);
if ( ! match) {
console.log(value + 'is not a number that has between 1,20 digits');
}

try remove the quotes from regex variable.

if ( /regex/.match( value ) ) {
//do stuff
}

That's one odd regexp... why don't you use
/^\d{1,20}$/.test(value)

How to extract a string using JavaScript Regex?

I'm trying to extract a substring from a file with JavaScript Regex. Here is a slice from the file :
DATE:20091201T220000
SUMMARY:Dad's birthday
the field I want to extract is "Summary". Here is the approach:
extractSummary : function(iCalContent) {
/*
input : iCal file content
return : Event summary
*/
var arr = iCalContent.match(/^SUMMARY\:(.)*$/g);
return(arr);
}

function extractSummary(iCalContent) {
var rx = /\nSUMMARY:(.*)\n/g;
var arr = rx.exec(iCalContent);
return arr[1];
}
You need these changes:
Put the * inside the parenthesis as
suggested above. Otherwise your matching
group will contain only one
character.
Get rid of the ^ and $. With the global option they match on start and end of the full string, rather than on start and end of lines. Match on explicit newlines instead.
I suppose you want the matching group (what's
inside the parenthesis) rather than
the full array? arr[0] is
the full match ("\nSUMMARY:...") and
the next indexes contain the group
matches.
String.match(regexp) is
supposed to return an array with the
matches. In my browser it doesn't (Safari on Mac returns only the full
match, not the groups), but
Regexp.exec(string) works.

You need to use the m flag:
multiline; treat beginning and end characters (^ and $) as working
over multiple lines (i.e., match the beginning or end of each line
(delimited by \n or \r), not only the very beginning or end of the
whole input string)
Also put the * in the right place:
"DATE:20091201T220000\r\nSUMMARY:Dad's birthday".match(/^SUMMARY\:(.*)$/gm);
//------------------------------------------------------------------^ ^
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Your regular expression most likely wants to be
/\nSUMMARY:(.*)$/g
A helpful little trick I like to use is to default assign on match with an array.
var arr = iCalContent.match(/\nSUMMARY:(.*)$/g) || [""]; //could also use null for empty value
return arr[0];
This way you don't get annoying type errors when you go to use arr

This code works:
let str = "governance[string_i_want]";
let res = str.match(/[^governance\[](.*)[^\]]/g);
console.log(res);
res will equal "string_i_want". However, in this example res is still an array, so do not treat res like a string.
By grouping the characters I do not want, using [^string], and matching on what is between the brackets, the code extracts the string I want!
You can try it out here: https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/tryit.asp?filename=tryjsref_match_regexp
Good luck.

(.*) instead of (.)* would be a start. The latter will only capture the last character on the line.
Also, no need to escape the :.

You should use this :
var arr = iCalContent.match(/^SUMMARY\:(.)*$/g);
return(arr[0]);

this is how you can parse iCal files with javascript
function calParse(str) {
function parse() {
var obj = {};
while(str.length) {
var p = str.shift().split(":");
var k = p.shift(), p = p.join();
switch(k) {
case "BEGIN":
obj[p] = parse();
break;
case "END":
return obj;
default:
obj[k] = p;
}
}
return obj;
}
str = str.replace(/\n /g, " ").split("\n");
return parse().VCALENDAR;
}
example =
'BEGIN:VCALENDAR\n'+
'VERSION:2.0\n'+
'PRODID:-//hacksw/handcal//NONSGML v1.0//EN\n'+
'BEGIN:VEVENT\n'+
'DTSTART:19970714T170000Z\n'+
'DTEND:19970715T035959Z\n'+
'SUMMARY:Bastille Day Party\n'+
'END:VEVENT\n'+
'END:VCALENDAR\n'
cal = calParse(example);
alert(cal.VEVENT.SUMMARY);