What Does the Regular Expression /_/G Mean?

What Does the Regular Expression /_/G Mean?

JavaScript:

.replace(/_/g," ");

I have it in my code but can't remember why or what it does! Can one of you regular expression gurus help?

I know this may seem basic, but regular expressions are not my cup of tea and googling for /g didn't help much.

1

4 Answers

The regex matches the _ character.

The g means Global, and causes the replace call to replace all matches, not just the first one.

Like everyone else has said, it replaces all underscores with spaces. So "Hello_there." would become "Hello there."

But along with the answer, I want to suggest something to you. Use comments.

In your code say something like:

// Replaces all underscores so that blah blah blah blah blah..
var hello = "Hello_there."
    .replace(/_/g, ' ');
0

Returns a new string with all the underscores in the source string replaced with spaces.

we can use the expression / /g to search or extract a pattern more than once, you can use the g flag.

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Sarah Jenkins
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Sarah Jenkins

Sarah Jenkins is a veteran tech journalist with over 12 years of experience covering artificial intelligence, mobile innovations, and digital ethics. Her insights have appeared in leading technology publications worldwide.