Question

Hi i am having trouble to replace five “|||||” to one “|”.

var ss = "123|||||456|||||789|||||";
var ww = ss.replace(/[|||||]\W/g, "|");

The output i get is

123|||456|||789|||

What are the correct RegEx i should write??
Thanks.

Answer 1

You can do the following:

var ss = "123|||||456|||||789|||||";
console.log(ss.replace(/[|]{5}/g, "|"));

As mentioned in the comments, the [] defines a character class and matches any of the characters defined in it. for example [a-z] will match the lowercase alphabet.

However since you only need to match the pipe (|) character, you can remove the brackets and escape it like so:

console.log(ss.replace(/\|{5}/g, "|")); 

It needs to be escaped by a \ because the pipe is a special character in java script.
The curly notation {5} after the pipe defines how many of ‘the previous’ you want to match.