Regular Expression is not working with string name

Question

I have a Regular Expression in javascript that is not working. My code is...

JavaScript :

  function doit()
  {
     var string="something";
     var el=document.getElementById("monu");
     el.innerHTML = el.innerHTML.replace(/(string)/ig,"Everything");
  }

HTML :

    <div id="monu">something is better than nothing</div>
    <button onclick=doit();>replace</button>

In function replace if I am using string as pattern it is not working. How can I make it work...any suggestion..

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:11:44Z

4

Use the RegExp constructor :

el.innerHTML = el.innerHTML.replace(new RegExp(string,'ig'),"Everything");

Note that if you want to replace a string containing special regex patterns without interpreting them as regex patterns (for example you want to replace exactly ".*"), then you need to escape your string. There's unfortunately no standard function in JavaScript for that but it's easy to write and find (here's one).

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:11

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 29, 2014 at 13:13

Denys Séguret

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2 Comments

DEV Over a year ago

Thanks for quick reply, I have one more question suppose I have to replace it with string1 where string1="Everything", what shoud i do in this case..?

SamWhan Over a year ago

Nice. But, if possible, I would skip the string var and create the var as a RegExp immediatly, to avoid what dystroy mentions in the note. I.e. var theRE = new RegExp('something', 'ig'); ... el.innerHTML = el.innerHTML.replace(theRE,"Everything");. This also allows you to reuse the regex at lower cost (performance wise).

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