Replace all non Alpha Numeric characters, New Lines, and multiple White Space with one Space

javascript regex replace alphanumeric
The General picture The General · Jan 1, 2014 · Viewed 152.2k times · Source

I'm looking for a neat RegEx solution to replace

  • All non Alpha-Numeric Characters
  • All NewLines
  • All multiple instances of white space

With a single space

For those playing at home (the following does work)

text.replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gmi, " ").replace(/\s+/g, " ");

My thinking is RegEx is probably powerful enough to achieve this in one statement. The components i think id need are

  • [^a-z0-9] - to Remove non Alpha-Numeric characters
  • \s+ - match any collections of spaces
  • \r?\n|\r - match all new line
  • /gmi - global, multi-line, case insensitive

However, i cant seem to style the regex in the right way (the following doesn't work)

text.replace(/[^a-z0-9]|\s+|\r?\n|\r/gmi, " ");

Input

234&^%,Me,2 2013 1080p x264 5 1 BluRay
S01(*&asd 05
S1E5
1x05
1x5

Desired Output

234 Me 2 2013 1080p x264 5 1 BluRay S01 asd 05 S1E5 1x05 1x5

Answer

Jonny 5 picture Jonny 5 · Jan 1, 2014

Be aware, that \W leaves the underscore. A short equivalent for [^a-zA-Z0-9] would be [\W_]

text.replace(/[\W_]+/g," ");

\W is the negation of shorthand \w for [A-Za-z0-9_] word characters (including the underscore)

Example at regex101.com

Related questions

JavaScript replace/regex

Given this function: function Repeater(template) { var repeater = { markup: template, replace: function(pattern, value) { this.markup = this.markup.replace(pattern, value); } }; return repeater; }; How do I make this.markup.replace() replace globally? Here's the problem. If I use it like …

Read More
Replace multiple strings with multiple other strings

I'm trying to replace multiple words in a string with multiple other words. The string is "I have a cat, a dog, and a goat." However, this does not produce "I have a dog, a goat, and a cat", but …

Read More
How can I replace a regex substring match in Javascript?

var str = 'asd-0.testing'; var regex = /asd-(\d)\.\w+/; str.replace(regex, 1); That replaces the entire string str with 1. I want it to replace the matched substring instead of the whole string. Is this possible in Javascript?

Read More