javascript - Replace " ." with "." to eliminate spaces before dots

Question

I've tried with replace(/ ./g, '.'); to eliminate the comma before the dot without succes. Any idea what is wrong? Thanks.

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '13 at 12:33

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I presume your complaint is that every character followed by a space is being replaced with a .. This is because . is a wildcard character. Literally, it means "match anything except a newline":

(The dot, the decimal point) matches any single character except the newline characters: \n \r \u2028 or \u2029. (MDN)

You need to escape it if you want to match a literal .:

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

answered Dec 07 '13 at 12:33

lonesomeday

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And how is it if theese comas and dots are repeated, like . . . . Thanks – zsola3075457 Dec 07 '13 at 12:48
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@zsola3075457 `". . . .".replace(/ \./g, '.')` gives `....`. Is this not what you want? – lonesomeday Dec 07 '13 at 12:49

hwnd · Answer 2 · 2013-12-07T14:26:40.813

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The way you are presenting the dot . means match any single character (except newline), the dot . is considered a special character in regular expressions and needs to be escaped.

I would tack on a quantifier also with matching the whitespace before the dot so it replaces all occurrences.

str = str.replace(/\s+\./g, '.');

edited Dec 07 '13 at 14:26

answered Dec 07 '13 at 14:21

hwnd

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 07 '13 at 12:33

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The . is a special character, you should escape it:

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

answered Dec 07 '13 at 12:33

juan.facorro

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 07 '13 at 12:34

1

Have you tried string = string.replace(/\s\./, '.');?

answered Dec 07 '13 at 12:34

Arthur

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Yes, this solution it is better if I have more than 1 spaces before dot, by changing the \s to \s+. Thanks – zsola3075457 Dec 07 '13 at 12:50

javascript - Replace " ." with "." to eliminate spaces before dots

4 Answers4