Question

I have an array containing strings with prices and sometimes surrounded by characters.

How do I transform it from?

[0] > '$9.99/aa'
[1] > '$2.99'
[2] > '$1.'

to:

[0] > '9.99'
[1] > '2.99'
[2] > '1'

So I can do comparisons with the values? I just need to know how to change one and I can apply it to the array easily

Answer 1

+myString.replace(/[^\d.ex-]+/gi, '')

strips out all characters that cannot appear in a JavaScript number, and then applies the + operator to it to convert it to a number. If you don’t have numbers in hex format or exponential format then you can do without the ex.

EDIT:

To handle locales, and handle numbers in a more tailored way, I would do the following

// Get rid of myriad separators and normalize the fraction separator.
if ((0.5).toLocaleString().indexOf(',') >= 0) {
  myString = myString.replace(/\./g, '').replace(/,/g, '.');
} else {
  myString = myString.replace(/,/g, '');
}

var numericValue = +(myString.match(
    // Matches JavaScript number literals excluding octal.
    /[+-]?(?:(?:(?:0|[1-9]\d*)(?:\.\d*)?|\.\d+)(?:e[+-]?\d+)?|0x[0-9a-f]+)/i)
    // Will produce NaN if there's no match.
    || NaN);