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JavaScript - Replace function surprise problem of replacing only one occurrence and workaround for this

Jul 21 2011 4:35AM by Ramireddy

Today I got a surprising problem of JavaScript replace() method is replacing only the first occurrence. Suppose we have a string "AABAA", If we wants to replace "AA" with "A", then the replace("AABAA","AA","A") returning "ABAA" only. It is replacing only the first occurrence. You can see below script returns "ABAA".

           var tmp = "AABAA";
           tmp = tmp.replace("AA","A");
           alert(tmp);

A quick search in Google indicates that by changing "AA" with "/AA/g" will replace all occurrences. By specifying option "g" we are performing global search. You can see below script will return output ABA. Remember while specifying this option, you need to make it as regular expression. "/" character indicates start and end of regular expression.

           var tmp = "AABAA";
           tmp = tmp.replace(/AA/g,"A");
           alert(tmp);

2 Comments

you can also use the following code in javascript if you are not sure for the second instance would replace or not.

var tmp = "AABAA";
var sNewStr = '';
var newStringArray = new Array();
newStringArray = tmp.split('AA');
sNewStr = newStringArray .join('A');

commented on Jul 21 2011 10:39PM

Paresh Bhavsar

1911 · 0% · 9

Wow.....This is an excellent technique..

commented on Jul 22 2011 1:20AM

Ramireddy

2 · 41% · 12972

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"JavaScript - Replace function surprise problem of replacing only one occurrence and workaround for this" rated 5 out of 5 by 8 readers +Ramireddy