Remove word from string beginning with a certain character

Question

let string = 'the username @bradley is ready'

How can I strip all words which begin with the @ symbol so that the output is 'the username is ready'

I would use regex replace: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/replace — Dean, Dec 11 '19 at 16:04

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 11 '19 at 16:05

4

 string.replace(/\@[^\s]*/g, "")

Use a regex to match every @ followed by non whitespace characters. Replace those with an empty string.

answered Dec 11 '19 at 16:05

Jonas Wilms

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Thanks! Just about works. That outputs 'the username is ready' with an extra space between 'username' and 'is', how can I fix that? Stack Overflow removes the double space but I'm sure you get what I mean lol – visvimchristo Dec 11 '19 at 16:11
2

use this one to remove extra space **string.replace(/\@[^\s] */g, "")** – Zulqarnain Jalil Dec 11 '19 at 16:12
@visvimchristo what about a@b? Will that be removed too? Also what about "a @b.", "@a b" ? – Jonas Wilms Dec 11 '19 at 16:13
@JonasWilms Only standalone words to be removed, with a space before and after the word. So a@b should be untouched, as it begins with the letter 'a' and not '@' – visvimchristo Dec 11 '19 at 16:17
@JonasWilms I basically just need to remove the trailing space to avoid having a double space – visvimchristo Dec 11 '19 at 16:28
"with a space before and after the word" so what about "@a b" and "a @b" ? – Jonas Wilms Dec 11 '19 at 16:29
Yes, in those cases I'd like those removed as well. – visvimchristo Dec 11 '19 at 16:37
I think this is what you're looking for, to prevent duplicate spaces: `.replace(/\s@\S+\s/g, ' ')` – Alexander Rice Dec 11 '19 at 17:10

Alexander Rice · Answer 2 · 2019-12-11T17:19:24.423

Here's a solution that should remove words starting with @ from your strings. It should preserve punctuation and not create duplicate spaces. (This solution does not exclude emails though)

// \s? optional preceding space
// [^\s.,!?:;()"']+ at least one character that isn't a space or punctuation
// ([.,!?:;()"'])? an optional punctuation character, saved to a capture group
    
function stripUserHandles (string) {
  return string.replace(/\s?@[^\s.,!?:;()"']+([.,!?:;()"'])?/g, "$1")
}
    
console.log(
  stripUserHandles('The username @bradley is ready')
  // The username is ready
)
console.log(
  stripUserHandles('The username is @bradley. It is ready')
  // The username is. It is ready
)
console.log(
  stripUserHandles('Alright "@bradley", Here\'s your username')
  // Alright "", Here's your username
)

I see in an earlier comment that you only want to match words with a space before and after. If this is the case, all you should need is `.replace(/\s@\S+\s/g, ' ')` we match a space on each side and allow one or more non-space characters following an @. We then replace the whole match with a single space. — Alexander Rice, Dec 11 '19 at 17:08

Remove word from string beginning with a certain character

2 Answers2