Looking to backslash escape parentheses and spaces in a javascript string.
I have a string: (some string), and I need it to be \(some\ string\)
Right now, I'm doing it like this:
x = '(some string)'
x.replace('(','\\(')
x.replace(')','\\)')
x.replace(' ','\\ ')
That works, but it's ugly. Is there a cleaner way to go about it?
Looking to backslash escape parentheses and spaces in a javascript string.
I have a string: (some string), and I need it to be \(some\ string\)
Right now, I'm doing it like this:
x = '(some string)'
x.replace('(','\\(')
x.replace(')','\\)')
x.replace(' ','\\ ')
That works, but it's ugly. Is there a cleaner way to go about it?
Share Improve this question edited Apr 4, 2014 at 21:05 Barmar 781k56 gold badges545 silver badges659 bronze badges asked Apr 4, 2014 at 21:03 Kevin WhitakerKevin Whitaker 13.4k13 gold badges53 silver badges94 bronze badges 1- Your code doesn't actually work. It will only replace the first occurrence of each character, not all of them. – Barmar Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 21:09
2 Answers
Reset to default 14you can do this:
x.replace(/(?=[() ])/g, '\\');
(?=...) is a lookahead assertion and means 'followed by'
[() ] is a character class.
Use a regular expression, and $0 in the replacement string to substitute what was matched in the original:
x = x.replace(/[() ]/g, '\\$0')