RegEx noob question

[neptune6jun44@gmail.com]

I need to take a string and allow only the first occurrence of an
apostrophe for the validation of a city name...

Example: D'Iberville, MS

Say someone enters D'I'berville, MS by mistake..

I'm able to retain all the apostrophes with the following:

city.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\'\$\,\.\#\s]/g,"");

I want to retain the first apostrophe only. I've tried adding {2,} in
with the apostrophe, but no luck.

An example of the proper way to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Kiran Makam]

Re: RegEx noob question

On Sep 19, 6:01 am, "neptune6ju...@ gmail.com"
<neptune6ju...@ gmail.comwrote:

    city.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\'\$\,\.\#\s]/g,"");

In string replace method, second parameter can be a function. You can
make use of this like:
-----------
var str = "D'I'ber'v'i'll e";
var myRe = /([^']*')(.*)/;

str = str.replace(myR e,
function (matchStr, strInParanthesi s1, strInParanthesi s2) {
return strInParanthesi s1 + strInParanthesi s2.replace(/'/g,
"");
}
);
-----------

Output:
"D'I'ber'v'i'll e" will become "D'Ibervill e"
"'DIber'v'i'lle " will become "'DIbervill e"

- Kiran Makam

[Dr J R Stockton]

Re: RegEx noob question

On Sep 19, 2:01 am, "neptune6ju...@ gmail.com"
<neptune6ju...@ gmail.comwrote:

I want to retain the first apostrophe only.

S = "1'2'3'4'5"
S.replace("'", "\xFF").replace (/'/g, "").replace("\x FF", "'")

There, \xFF can be replaced by any chatacter that cannot occur in the
input.

S = "1'2'3'4'5"
P = S.indexOf("'")
S = S.substring(0,P +1) + S.substring(P+1 ).replace(/'/g, "")

--
(c) John Stockton, near London, UK. Posting with Google.
Mail: J.R.""""""""@ph ysics.org or (better) via Home Page at
Web: <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/>
FAQish topics, acronyms, links, etc.; Date, Delphi, JavaScript, ...

[Bart Van der Donck]

Re: RegEx noob question

Dr J R Stockton wrote:

<neptune6ju...@ gmail.comwrote:

>I want to retain the first apostrophe only.

>
S = "1'2'3'4'5"
S.replace("'", "\xFF").replace (/'/g, "").replace("\x FF", "'")

I think this would be the most efficient, yes. If there were a single
regex, it would go like this:

/(?<=')([^']*)'/g,'$1'

or

/(?<=')(.*?)'/g,'$1'

But javascript only supports look-ahead (?=/?!) and not look-behind (?
<=/?<!); so there is no other choice than finding a workaround. It
already struck me a few times that javascript has some gaps in the
language: no regex look-behind, no reverse()-property for strings, ...

--
Bart