Remove all special characters except space from a string using JavaScript

Question

I want to remove all special characters except space from a string using JavaScript.

For example, abc's test#s should output as abcs tests.

Riedel

How do you define special character? – Varmint

With regular expression var = string.replace(/[^\w\s]/gi, ''); Live Example : helpseotools.com/text-tools/remove-special-characters – Colpotomy

Answer 1

You should use the string replace function, with a single regex. Assuming by special characters, you mean anything that's not letter, here is a solution:

const str = "abc's test#s";
console.log(str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z ]/g, ""));

Applewhite

To use this solution on non-latin alphabet please check this answer out – Trefor

This will also removed numerical characters! – Reunionist

Actually you need this str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/g, ""); notice there's a space between 0-9 and ] – Frambesia

It need some tweak, it didn't remove / or - characters and the first character of camelCase supposed to be in lower case, but this one in uppercase. – Vigor

This leaves stuff like: pspanspanstrongItem SKUstrongnbspspanspanKBRspanspanpp This is a bit better. – Siftings

This does not work for Arabic, Chinese, German, French etc special symbols – Milker

this does not remove carriage return \n – Sixtyfourmo

Answer 2

You can do it specifying the characters you want to remove:

string = string.replace(/[&\/\\#,+()$~%.'":*?<>{}]/g, '');

Alternatively, to change all characters except numbers and letters, try:

string = string.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/g, '');

Tendance

what if I don't wanna remove space using this? /[^a-zA-Z0-9]/g – Scourings

@ArbazAbid to keep space just add that to white listed characters. your regex would be "/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/g" (notice whitespace after 9) – Herrle

This was the answer that worked, if a space is required. – Lycanthrope

this replaces () and whitespaces in string .text().replace(/[ ()]/g, '') – Swithbart

What does that regex represent? anything but alphanumeric chars? What is the negation symbol in regex? – Sweep

@Sweep It represents everything that is not (^) letters (a-zA-Z), numbers (0-9) and a space ( ). So the negation would be something like "replace everything that is not letters, numbers and space by...". – Holmium

Answer 3

The first solution does not work for any UTF-8 alphabet. (It will cut text such as Привіт). I have managed to create a function which does not use RegExp and use good UTF-8 support in the JavaScript engine. The idea is simple if a symbol is equal in uppercase and lowercase it is a special character. The only exception is made for whitespace.

function removeSpecials(str) {
    var lower = str.toLowerCase();
    var upper = str.toUpperCase();

    var res = "";
    for(var i=0; i<lower.length; ++i) {
        if(lower[i] != upper[i] || lower[i].trim() === '')
            res += str[i];
    }
    return res;
}

Update: Please note, that this solution works only for languages where there are small and capital letters. In languages like Chinese, this won't work.

Update 2: I came to the original solution when I was working on a fuzzy search. If you also trying to remove special characters to implement search functionality, there is a better approach. Use any transliteration library which will produce you string only from Latin characters and then the simple Regexp will do all magic of removing special characters. (This will work for Chinese also and you also will receive side benefits by making Tromsø == Tromso).

Mumble

Thank you for this quite creative solution. It is much more in line with how languages actually work, since many of us don't consider "Привіт" or "æøå" special characters. Most solutions out there cut any character that isn't part of the English alphabet. – Mentholated

Almost the perfect answer for me, but unfortunately it considers Chinese characters to be special characters. – Undone

@EricMajerus and hindi too – Nary

Be careful, this also considers numbers as special characters. – Abbottson

Answer 4

search all not (word characters || space):

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

Neddie

perfect! removing all special unicode characters from the string. – Worked

This was a nice solution I used for searching through first+last name. It handles accented characters (é) as well. I added a apostrophe to handle names like D'Angelo. – Swinford

Answer 5

I don't know JavaScript, but isn't it possible using regex?

Something like [^\w\d\s] will match anything but digits, characters and whitespaces. It would be just a question to find the syntax in JavaScript.

Ark

https://mcmap.net/q/24958/-remove-all-special-characters-with-regexp This is the answer to your question :) – Tillietillinger

Answer 6

const str = "abc's@thy#^g&test#s";
console.log(str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z ]/g, ""));

Pattipattie

pls, add explaination of what u did – Humboldt

Numbers are not special characters and they will be deleted – Rothrock

Letters like ąčęėįšųūž may not be "special" characters in some context and they will be removed. Also all japanese/chinese and other languages with local letters. This code will keep only english alphabet a-z and A-Z. – Rockefeller

Answer 7

I tried Seagul's very creative solution, but found it treated numbers also as special characters, which did not suit my needs. So here is my (failsafe) tweak of Seagul's solution...

//return true if char is a number
function isNumber (text) {
  if(text) {
    var reg = new RegExp('[0-9]+$');
    return reg.test(text);
  }
  return false;
}

function removeSpecial (text) {
  if(text) {
    var lower = text.toLowerCase();
    var upper = text.toUpperCase();
    var result = "";
    for(var i=0; i<lower.length; ++i) {
      if(isNumber(text[i]) || (lower[i] != upper[i]) || (lower[i].trim() === '')) {
        result += text[i];
      }
    }
    return result;
  }
  return '';
}

Sladen

You forgot to declare reg in your first function. – Recount

Answer 8

Try to use this one

var result= stringToReplace.replace(/[^\w\s]/g, '')

[^] is for negation, \w for [a-zA-Z0-9_] word characters and \s for space, /[]/g for global

Lindner

Answer 9

With regular expression

let string  = "!#This tool removes $special *characters* /other/ than! digits, characters and spaces!!!$";

var NewString= string.replace(/[^\w\s]/gi, '');
console.log(NewString); 

Result //This tool removes special characters other than digits characters and spaces

Live Example : https://helpseotools.com/text-tools/remove-special-characters

Colpotomy

Answer 10

dot (.) may not be considered special. I have added an OR condition to Mozfet's & Seagull's answer:

function isNumber (text) {
      reg = new RegExp('[0-9]+$');
      if(text) {
        return reg.test(text);
      }
      return false;
    }

function removeSpecial (text) {
  if(text) {
    var lower = text.toLowerCase();
    var upper = text.toUpperCase();
    var result = "";
    for(var i=0; i<lower.length; ++i) {
      if(isNumber(text[i]) || (lower[i] != upper[i]) || (lower[i].trim() === '') || (lower[i].trim() === '.')) {
        result += text[i];
      }
    }
    return result;
  }
  return '';
}

Scoles

Answer 11

Try this:

const strippedString = htmlString.replace(/(<([^>]+)>)/gi, "");
console.log(strippedString);

Chitwood

This would leave the ' and # in the stripped string. Example output: "abc's test#s" – Neptunium

Answer 12

const input = `#if_1 $(PR_CONTRACT_END_DATE) == '23-09-2019' # 
Test27919<[email protected]> #elseif_1 $(PR_CONTRACT_START_DATE) ==  '20-09-2019' #
Sender539<[email protected]> #elseif_1 $(PR_ACCOUNT_ID) == '1234' #
AdestraSID<[email protected]> #else_1#Test27919<[email protected]>#endif_1#`;
const replaceString = input.split('$(').join('->').split(')').join('<-');


console.log(replaceString.match(/(?<=->).*?(?=<-)/g));

Sandysandye

Answer 13

Whose special characters you want to remove from a string, prepare a list of them and then user javascript replace function to remove all special characters.

var str = 'abc'de#;:sfjkewr47239847duifyh';
alert(str.replace("'","").replace("#","").replace(";","").replace(":",""));

or you can run loop for a whole string and compare single single character with the ASCII code and regenerate a new string.

Gormley

No, please don't do that. It's really terribly slow. It is much, much better to use a regular expression. – Varmint

This solution is very nice for replacing just one character. In my case it was helpful, thanks. – Dunn

Instead of using replace method many times, please use it once only using regular expressions. – Schoolroom

If more characters come up this solution fails, regular exp is generic way of doing this and is fast – Hortatory