Question

I am trying to cleanup some Javascript code using jshint. In a third-party script that is being used, jshint complains about unescaped javascript in this line:

var cleanString = deaccentedString.replace(/([|()[{.+*?^$\\])/g,"\\$1");

I’d also like to understand what this regular expression does, but I don’t see it. Can anyone tell me what this is for and how to write it in a cleaned up way?

Thank your for any hints.

Answer 1

It matches any of the following characters: |()[{.+*?^$\ and replaces it with its escaped counterpart (backslash plus that character).

While it is legal in many regex dialects to include an unescaped [ inside a character class, it can trigger an error in others, so try this:

var cleanString = deaccentedString.replace(/[|()\[{.+*?^$\\]/g,"\\$0");

(the unnecessary capturing group could be dropped, too.)