JavaScript regex to remove special characters and remove extra spaces while leaving commas

Question

I'm trying to do two things to clean the string, the first is to remove any space and replace it with a comma separator, the second is to remove any non-alphanumeric characters (other than the comma); I have the first part functional, but now I can't figure out how to remove the special characters as well:

$("#fancydiv").keyup(function(e) {
    var str = this.value.replace(/(\w)[\s,]+(\w?)/g, '$1,$2');
    if (str!=this.value) this.value = str;
});

Not sure your first part is done right. Try with "a ,b, c,d , e,f " as input, the result will be "a,b, c,d , e,f". — gawi
– gawi, Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 13:28

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-06 13:12:50Z

2

'?no, special-characters!'.replace(/[^\w,]/g, '')
// => "no,specialcharacters"

[^\w,] will match match non-alphabet, non-digit, non-underscore character excluding a comma.

answered Nov 6, 2014 at 13:12

falsetru

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1 Comment

crunch Over a year ago

I ended up doing this, thank you! var str = this.value.replace(/(\w)[\s,]+(\w?)/g, '$1,$2').replace(/[^\w,]/g, '');

Aleš Krajník · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-06 13:12:27Z

0

Try this:

var str = this.value.replace(/\s/g, ',').replace(/[^\w,]/g, '');

answered Nov 6, 2014 at 13:12

Aleš Krajník

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2 Comments

gawi Over a year ago

a , b would become a,,,b. I don't think this is what the OP wanted.

Aleš Krajník Over a year ago

Well, I think it's exactly what OP asked - "the first is remove any spaces and replace it with a comma separator"... whether an empty string is also a word was not defined in the question, as well as what to do with spaces surrounding commas. But yeah, probably he wanted only one comma between real words.

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