I have a URL that I need to manipulate. I cant seem to replace all the '+' within a query string with whitespace.
var url = window.location.replace(/+/g, ' ');
What am I doing wrong here?
Or is there a better method?
asked May 15, 2012 at 15:32
3 Answers
replace() is a method on window.location, but it's not the one you think. You want call replace() on location.href.
var url = window.location.href.replace(/\+/g, ' ');
As Vega answered, note that you also need to escape the + because of its special meaning as a quantifier.
answered May 15, 2012 at 15:34
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1replace won't replace all occurrences, but +1 for
window.location.replaceCommented May 15, 2012 at 15:36
You need to escape the +. + has a special meaning in regEx.
var url = window.location.href.replace(/\+/g, ' ');
Edit: Changed to .href
answered May 15, 2012 at 15:33
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this is perfect, why does it have a different meaning if you mind me asking? Commented May 15, 2012 at 15:37
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2@CecilTheodore: It's quantifier. It means "match the preceding pattern one or more times". I recommend to have a look at regular-expressions.info. Commented May 15, 2012 at 15:38
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+is a quantifier in regEx which means it will test for any character before+for 1 or more occurrences. Commented May 15, 2012 at 15:38
There is an alternative if you don't need to run it thousands of times.
var url = window.location.href.split('+').join(' ');
The reason I mentioned how often it is run is this will be a little slower than a regex in Firefox, a fair bit slower in chrome and oddly faster in Opera according to the tests here: http://jsperf.com/regex-vs-split-join
So for a simple URL change it should be fine to use that syntax.
+is a special regex characters.