Remove all special characters except for @ symbol from string in JavaScript

Question

I have a string:

“Gazelles were mentioned by @JohnSmith while he had $100 in his pocket and screamed W#$@%@$!!!!"

I need:

“Gazelles were mentioned by @JohnSmith while he had 100 in his pocket and screamed"

How to remove all special characters from string EXCEPT the @ symbol. I tried:

str.replace(/[^\w\s]/gi, '')

Thank you. I also have sentences with the ↵ symbol, which isn't getting removed. — Cybernetic
– Cybernetic, Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 15:38
Do you want to keep the @ only when it is followed by a word char? (?:[^\w\s@]+|@(?!\w)) — The fourth bird
– The fourth bird, Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 15:40
So I'd go with: @(?!\w)|[^\w\s@] for example. Pretty much what @TheFourthBird mentioned earlier. — JvdV
– JvdV, Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 15:48
That is because the \s in the negated character class makes it not match a newline. It could be like this for example [^\w \t@]+|@(?!\w) regex101.com/r/2fM0LK/1 — The fourth bird
– The fourth bird, Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 15:54

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-29 16:17:10Z

2

If you want to keep the @ when it is followed by a word char and keeping the W is also ok and also remove the newlines, you could for example change the \s to match spaces or tabs [ \t]

Add the @ to the negated character class and use an alternation specifying to only match the @ when it is not followed by a word character using a negative lookahead.

[^\w \t@]+|@(?!\w)

[^\w \t@]+ Match 1+ times any char except a word char, space or tab
| Or
@(?!\w) Match an @ not directly followed by a word char

Regex demo

In the replacement use an empty string.

answered Feb 29, 2020 at 16:17

The fourth bird

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