RegExp help!!

[Jack Black]

Hi, all!! Need a hand with a regular expression... Let's say I have this
string:
"Now is 'the time' for all 'good men' to come to 'the aid' of their country"

I want to delete each occurrance of any string contained within the
apostrophes, including the apostrophes. So in the above example, the result
should be:
"Now is for all to come to of their country"

Tried several different expressions, but can't find one that works... Any
ideas?

Thanks!
Jack

[Sergey I.Grachyov]

Re: RegExp help!!

Hi!

Use this script, please:

var s = "Now is 'the time' for all 'good men' to come to 'the aid' of their
country"

s = s.replace(/\'.+?\'/g,'');

alert(s);


--
Sergey.

http://www.takereal.com/freelance/

"Jack Black" <jackblackisbac k@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3f96ea89_3 @127.0.0.1...[color=blue]
> Hi, all!! Need a hand with a regular expression... Let's say I have this
> string:
> "Now is 'the time' for all 'good men' to come to 'the aid' of their[/color]
country"[color=blue]
>
> I want to delete each occurrance of any string contained within the
> apostrophes, including the apostrophes. So in the above example, the[/color]
result[color=blue]
> should be:
> "Now is for all to come to of their country"
>
> Tried several different expressions, but can't find one that works... Any
> ideas?
>
> Thanks!
> Jack
>
>[/color]

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Re: RegExp help!!

Sergey I.Grachyov wrote:
[color=blue]
> var s = "Now is 'the time' for all 'good men' to come to 'the aid' of their
> country"
>
> s = s.replace(/\'.+?\'/g,'');
>
> alert(s);[/color]

Unfortunately, this will not work prior to JavaScript 1.5 where non-greedy
modifiers were implemented at first. Therefore it will probably not work in
Internet Explorer prior to version 6.0 SP-1, Opera below version 7.0 (CMIIW)
and definitely not in Netscape prior to 6.0 (Mozilla prior to /5.0).

However, if you cannot make a RegExp non-greedy, you can still design it
not to match substrings containing specific characters, so

s = s.replace(/'[^']+'/g, '');

will be greedy but will only match what is between each pair of "'",
and not "'the time'...'the aid'". And it will most certainly be
compatible with other UAs than Mozilla/5.0.

BTW: "'" within RegExp literals need not to be escaped.


PointedEars