Question

I have a function f similar to

function f(str){
    alert("abc"+str);
}

Now, I want to use JavaScript special charecter “\b” in such a way that I can choose if I want to display the hardcoded string “abc” or not. For example,

f("\b\b"+"yz"); //should output "ayz"

I tried the same, but it does not work. In other words, I want to concat a string with a backspace character so that I can remove last characters from the string.

Can we do this in JavaScript?

EDIT
The real code is too much big (its a HUGE 1 liner that concats many many strings). To map that in above example, we cannot edit the function f, so do whatever you want from outside function f.

Answer 1

The problem comes from the fact that \b is just another character in the ASCII code. The special behaviour is only when implemented by some string reader, for example, a text terminal.

You will need to implement the backspace behaviour yourself.

function RemoveBackspaces(str)
{
    while (str.indexOf("\b") != -1)
    {
        str = str.replace(/.?\x08/, ""); // 0x08 is the ASCII code for \b
    }
    return str;
}

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/kendfrey/sELDv/

Use it like this:

var str = RemoveBackspaces(f("\b\byz")); // returns "ayz"