Question

When I user click on the button remove word and as enter 2 in the input box it should remove it from the element id=”list”

<input type="text" id="word"><input type="button" value="remove word">

<span id="list">1,2,3</span>

I did the following on the click event:

var text = $('.word').val();
    $('#list').html($('#list').html().replace(/text/ig, ""));

I understand it looks for the string text and not the var. So how can I change the syntax to make it search for the var.

Answer 1

Literal regexps (/.../) are literal in such a way that they cannot contain variables. You’d need to construct a regexp this way:

var text = $('.word').val();
$('#list').html($('#list').html().replace(new RegExp(text, "ig"), ""));

Edit: If you need to have following commas removed, you’d be best off by parsing it as an Array and removing the appropriate element:

var text = $('.word').val();
var array = $('#list').html().split(","); // split into an Array
                                          // items are delimited by a comma
while(array.indexOf(text) > -1) {         // as long as text is in the array...
    array.splice(array.indexOf(text), 1); // remove one element from the array
                                          // at the position the text is
}
$('#list').html(array.join(","));         // concatenate the elements with a
                                          // comma again