Question

I need to be able to count characters in textarea as the text is typed in, except anything that is surrounded by { }. I need to print the count below the text area. I’ve seen a few counters in JavaScript but am not sure how to exclude { enclosed text } from it. Do I do it on click?

<textarea id="myInput"></textarea>
Counter: <span id="charCount"></span>

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here you go:

$('#myInput').keyup(function() {
    $('#charCount').text( this.value.replace(/{.*}/g, '').length );
});

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/simevidas/8R9DH/

---

The regex that I use is not the best choice. Use the regex literals provided by @Matt or @Pointy.

---

Here:

var input = $('#myInput'),
    count = $('#charCount'),
    limit = 10;

input.keyup(function() {
    var n = this.value.replace(/{.*?}/g, '').length;
    if ( n > limit ) {
        this.value = this.value.substr(0, this.value.length + limit - n);
        n = 10;
    }
    count.text( n );
}).triggerHandler('keyup');

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/simevidas/8R9DH/2/