Question

I have a string:

 str =    'View:{
            Name:"View1",
            Image:{
                BackgroundImage:"Image.gif",
                Position: [0, 0],
                Width: 320,
                Height: 480
            },

            Button:{
                BackgroundImage:"Button.gif",
                Transition:"View2",
                Position: [49, 80],
                Width: 216,
                Height: 71
            },

            Button:{
                BackgroundImage:"Button2.gif",
                Position: [65, 217],
                Width: 188,
                Height: 134
            },'

That I use this regex to add ‘_#’ to elements that have ‘:{‘ at the end of them

var i = 0;
str = str.replace(/([^:]+):{/g, function(m, p1) { return p1 + "_" + (++i).toString() + ":{"; });

The ouput is

str =    'View_1:{
        Name:"View1",
        Image_2:{
            BackgroundImage:"Image.gif",
            Position: [0, 0],
            Width: 320,
            Height: 480
        },

        Button_3:{
            BackgroundImage:"Button.gif",
            Transition:"View2",
            Position: [49, 80],
            Width: 216,
            Height: 71
        },

        Button_4:{
            BackgroundImage:"Button2.gif",
            Position: [65, 217],
            Width: 188,
            Height: 134
        },'

Then I do a bunch of stuff with it and now I need to strip out the ‘#’ from it. How would I go about removing those ‘#’

Not cessary but another problem I am having is the the first regex is incrementing starting from 0 and giving each element the next incremented number. I am trying to make it so that each element increments on its type.
Like this:

str =    'View_1:{
        Name:"View1",
        Image_1:{
            BackgroundImage:"Image.gif",
            Position: [0, 0],
            Width: 320,
            Height: 480
        },

        Button_1:{
            BackgroundImage:"Button.gif",
            Transition:"View2",
            Position: [49, 80],
            Width: 216,
            Height: 71
        },

        Button_2:{
            BackgroundImage:"Button2.gif",
            Position: [65, 217],
            Width: 188,
            Height: 134
        },'

Any input on what im doing wrong here too?

Answer 1

For the first question, just replace _\d+:{ with :{

For the second, you need a separate counter for each type. Try this:

var i = {};
str = str.replace(/([^:]+):{/g, function(m, p1) {
    i[p1] = (i[p1] || 0)+1;
    return p1 + "_" + i[p1].toString() + ":{";
});