I need to filter a field composed of only spaces; something like:

if (word == /((\s)+)/ ) return 'no name'

but it doesn't work ... any other ideas? thank you for your ideas!

I need to filter a field composed of only spaces; something like:

if (word == /((\s)+)/ ) return 'no name'

but it doesn't work ... any other ideas? thank you for your ideas!

• javascript
• regex
• whitespace

4 Answers 4

You should use if(/^\s+$/.test(word)). (Notice the ^ and $, without them the regex will hold for any string that has at least a space-like character)

Just use the space character instead of the \s.

'   '.match(/ +/)
''.match(/ +/)

Output

["   ", index: 0, input: "   ", groups: undefined]'
null

You could do this same check with !word.trim() as well, and ignore regex completely.

How about NOT checking "word" by RegExp but using RegExp to replace all whitespaces and look what's left. If it's empty "word" is only composed by whitespaces:

   if (word.replace(/\s+/, "") === "") {
      console && console.log("empty string found!");
      return 'no name';
   }