How can I replace newlines/line breaks with spaces in javascript?
JavascriptRegexJavascript Problem Overview
I have a var that contains a big list of words (millions) in this format:
var words = "
car
house
home
computer
go
went
";
I want to make a function that will replace the newline between each word with space.
So the results would something look like this:
car house home computer go went
Javascript Solutions
Solution 1 - Javascript
You can use the .replace() function:
words = words.replace(/\n/g, " ");
Note that you need the g flag on the regular expression to get replace to replace all the newlines with a space rather than just the first one.
Working demo: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/VrAw2/
Solution 2 - Javascript
In case there are multiple line breaks (newline symbols) and if there can be both \r or \n, and you need to replace all subsequent linebreaks with one space, use
var new_words = words.replace(/[\r\n]+/g," ");
See regex demo
To match all Unicode line break characters and replace/remove them, add \x0B\x0C\u0085\u2028\u2029 to the above regex:
/[\r\n\x0B\x0C\u0085\u2028\u2029]+/g
The /[\r\n\x0B\x0C\u0085\u2028\u2029]+/g means:
[- start of a positive character class matching any single char defined inside it:\r- (\x0D) -\n]- a carriage return (CR)\n- (\x0A) - a line feed character (LF)\x0B- a line tabulation (LT)\x0C- form feed (FF)\u0085- next line (NEL)\u2028- line separator (LS)\u2029- paragraph separator (PS)
]- end of the character class+- a quantifier that makes the regex engine match the previous atom (the character class here) one or more times (consecutive linebreaks are matched)/g- find and replace all occurrences in the provided string.
var words = "car\r\n\r\nhouse\nhome\rcomputer\ngo\n\nwent";
document.body.innerHTML = "<pre>OLD:\n" + words + "</pre>";
var new_words = words.replace(/[\r\n\x0B\x0C\u0085\u2028\u2029]+/g," ");
document.body.innerHTML += "<pre>NEW:\n" + new_words + "</pre>";
Solution 3 - Javascript
Code : (FIXED)
var new_words = words.replace(/\n/g," ");
Solution 4 - Javascript
Some simple solution would look like
words.replace(/(\n)/g," ");
Solution 5 - Javascript
No need for global regex, use replaceAll instead of replace
myString.replaceAll('\n', ' ')