Javascript character replace all

Question

I am trying to find all the characters ('?') of a URL and replace it with &.

For instance, i have var test = "http://www.example.com/page1?hello?testing";

I first attempted:

document.write(test.replace("&","?"))

This resulted in that only the first ? would be replaced by & , then I found a question saying that I could add a g(for global)

document.write(test.replace("&"g,"?"))

Unfortunately, this did not have any effect either.

So how do I replace all characters of type &?

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 02 '13 at 12:54

5

You need to escape the ? character like so:

test.replace(/\?/g,"&")

answered Dec 02 '13 at 12:54

EasyPush

Also, you have your arguments in the wrong order. – EasyPush Dec 02 '13 at 13:00

Royi Namir · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-02T12:57:34.370

3

You're almost there.

the thing you saw in SO is regex replace :

document.write(test.replace(/\?/g,"&")) ( I thought you wanted to change & to ? , but you want the opposite.)

with the G flag - it will replace all the matches in the string

without it - it will replace only the first match.

edited Dec 02 '13 at 12:57

answered Dec 02 '13 at 12:52

Royi Namir

This is correct but for clarification, always escape your characters if you're using any special chars. – Henrik Andersson Dec 02 '13 at 12:53
Thank you for your answer but when i try this it doesnt output the right result: http://jsfiddle.net/9mVr5/2/ – Marc Rasmussen Dec 02 '13 at 12:55
@MarcRasmussen `hello.replace(/&/g,"?")` and not `test.replace(/&/g,"?")` http://jsfiddle.net/9mVr5/6/ – Royi Namir Dec 02 '13 at 12:56
@RoyiNamir same result http://jsfiddle.net/9mVr5/5/ – Marc Rasmussen Dec 02 '13 at 12:58
@MarcRasmussen no. you got the wrong ver. jsfiddle.net/9mVr5/6 – Royi Namir Dec 02 '13 at 12:58

2 Answers2