Question

I have the following jquery statement. I wish to remove the whitespace as shown below. So if I have a word like:

For example

• #Operating/System I would like the
  end result to show me
  #Operating\/System. (ie with a
  escape sequence).

• But if I have #Operating/System test then I want to show
  #Operating\/System + escape
  sequence for space. The .replace(/ /,'')
  part is incorrect but .replace("/","\\/") works
  well as per my requirements.

Please help!

$("#word" + lbl.eq(i).text().replace("/","\\/").replace(/ /,'')).hide();

Answer 1

$( "#word" + lbl.eq(i).text().replace(/([ /])/g, '\\$1') ).hide();

This matches all spaces and slashes in a string (and saves the respective char in group $1):

/([ /])/g

replacement with

'\\$1'

means a backslash plus the original char in group $1.

"#Operating/System test".replace(/([ /])/g, '\\$1');
-->
"#Operating\/System\ test"

Side advantage – there is only a singe call to replace().

EDIT: As requested by the OP, a short explanation of the regular expression /([ /])/g. It breaks down as follows:

/           # start of regex literal
  (         # start of match group $1 
    [ /]    # a character class (spaces and slashes)
  )         # end of group $1
/g          # end of regex literal + "global" modifier

When used with replace() as above, all spaces and slashes are replaced with themselves, preceded by a backslash.