I'm replacing a bunch of values in a regex with dollar amounts. The problem is that in IE, if I attempt to replace with an amount of $0 (or, theoretically, $1--$9), the replace never occurs since the it's trying to replace a non-existant group:

'foo'.replace(/f/g, '$0');

I want the result of that replacement to be "$0oo", which it is in Chrome & FF, but not IE9 (haven't tried other versions of IE).

Chrome & FF have an "issue" with the following, in that I can't figure out how to replace with a literal $1:

'foo'.replace(/(f)/g, '$1')

I'm replacing a bunch of values in a regex with dollar amounts. The problem is that in IE, if I attempt to replace with an amount of $0 (or, theoretically, $1--$9), the replace never occurs since the it's trying to replace a non-existant group:

'foo'.replace(/f/g, '$0');

I want the result of that replacement to be "$0oo", which it is in Chrome & FF, but not IE9 (haven't tried other versions of IE).

Chrome & FF have an "issue" with the following, in that I can't figure out how to replace with a literal $1:

'foo'.replace(/(f)/g, '$1')

• javascript
• regex
• replace

4 Answers 4

Write "$$0" to escape the $ sign.

In Chrome and Firefox you can workaround this limitation by using a function as the second argument of the replace function:

'foo'.replace(/(f)/g, function(){return '$1';}); // => $1oo

My own testing shows that IE8 is consistent with the other browsers on this issue.

The Problem:

'My Bank balance is {0} '.replace(/\{0\}/,'$0.22')
 results: "My Bank balance is {0}.22 " 
 This is not what we want

The solution:

'My Bank balance is {0} '.replace(/\{0\}/,'$$0.22')
results: "My Bank balance is $0.22 " 
'My Bank balance is {0} '.replace(/\{0\}/,"$0.22".replace(/\$/,'$$$$'))
result: "My Bank balance is $0.22 "

Explanation: I am trying to find '$' and replace by '$$'. To match '$' you have to escape it by '\$' and to replace '$$$$' you have to put four '$' as RegEx escape '$' for '$$'. Fun!!

@SLaks that should be more like: write "$$" for literal "$".

@cwolves getting a literal instead of a 'special' character (like "$" here) usually involves either doubling it or prefixing it with "\".