I'm using JavaScript RegEx to filter input (white list only acceptable chars). As .match() returns an array, the best way I found to 'glue' back together the string is as follows, which seems ugly, as then I have to remove the ma.

myString.match(/[A-Za-z-_0-9]/g).toString().replace(/,/g,'')

Is there a better RegEx approach in JS, or a better way to handle the array (e.g. like .join in Ruby)?

Thanks Brian

I'm using JavaScript RegEx to filter input (white list only acceptable chars). As .match() returns an array, the best way I found to 'glue' back together the string is as follows, which seems ugly, as then I have to remove the ma.

myString.match(/[A-Za-z-_0-9]/g).toString().replace(/,/g,'')

Is there a better RegEx approach in JS, or a better way to handle the array (e.g. like .join in Ruby)?

Thanks Brian

• javascript
• regex

1 Answer 1

There is a join in JavaScript as well. For instance:

myString.match(/[A-Za-z-_0-9]/g).join("")

The "" is the separator between each element of the array, so [1, 2, 3].join("") gives "123". However, you could also simply replace all characters not in your whitelist:

myString.replace(/[^A-Za-z-_0-9]/g, "")

Which will simply remove any character that isn't alphanumeric, a dash, or an underscore.