I am trying to strip out all non alpha numeric characters except for comma, dash and single quote. I know how to remove all non words from a string i.e

myString.replace(/\W/g,'');

But how do i do that with the exception of , - and ' ? I tried

myString.replace(/\W+[^,]/g,'');

Because i know how to negate using the ^ operator, just having trouble combining the regex.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I am trying to strip out all non alpha numeric characters except for comma, dash and single quote. I know how to remove all non words from a string i.e

myString.replace(/\W/g,'');

But how do i do that with the exception of , - and ' ? I tried

myString.replace(/\W+[^,]/g,'');

Because i know how to negate using the ^ operator, just having trouble combining the regex.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

• javascript
• regex

2 Answers 2

\w is the inverse of \W, so you can just use /[^\w,'-]/

EDIT: in case underscore is also not desired: /[^\w,'-]|_/

The following character class matches a single character that belongs to the class of letters, numbers, comma, dash, and single quote.

[-,'A-Za-z0-9]

The following matches a character that is not one of those:

[^-,'A-Za-z0-9]

So

var stripped = myString.replace(/[^-,'A-Za-z0-9]+/g, '');