I am using this expression: /\W+/g to match all characters that are not numbers, letters and spaces. It seems to be including spaces. How would I build a regex that did not include spaces?

I am using this expression: /\W+/g to match all characters that are not numbers, letters and spaces. It seems to be including spaces. How would I build a regex that did not include spaces?

• javascript
• regex

3 Answers 3

/[^a-z0-9\s]+/ig

Explanation:

[^   Character class which matches characters NOT in the following class
a-z  All lowercase letters of the alphabet
0-9  All numbers
\s   Whitespace characters
]    End of the character class

i   Case-insensitivity to match uppercase letters

A more accurate wording for \W is any Non-Alphanumeric character. \s is for Any Whitespace.

So, it would be something like this: [^\s]

\W means "non-word characters", the inverse of \w, so it will match spaces as well. I'm a bit surprised it doesn't match numbers, though.