Javascript String.Replace doesnt work?

Question

I'm currently trying to create a navigation system for a website I'm creating. I spent hours trying to figure this out, but i dont understand why its not working I'm trying to replace all occurrences of "index.html" with the variable filenames.

function changeSideNav(filenames)
{   
    var urlarray = window.location.href.split("?");
    var url = urlarray[0];
    alert(url); // This returns "http://localhost/xxx/index.html"
    var urlspl = url.replace(/index.html/gi,filenames);
    alert(url.replace(/index.html/i,filenames) +'/'+ filenames); //This returns "http://localhost/xxx/index.html/newpage.html" (if pram was newpage.html).
    //i txpected it to return "http://localhost/xxx//newpage.html"
    //set a new source
    document.getElementById('SideNavIframe').src = urlspl +'/'+ filenames;
}

Edit: i find this to be strange: if i try to replace "/index.html" instead of "index.html", it removes the "/" from the output so i get "http://localhost/xxxindex.html/newpage.html".

If I were you, I'd throw in an alert(filenames) to be sure you know everything that's going on. — Pointy
– Pointy, Commented May 15, 2011 at 13:11

stealthyninja · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-20 08:46:37Z

1

Not sure if this was your prob. But I was stuck on this for a good hour.

Here it is:
str.replace("s1", "s2") does NOT do anything to the str.

You need to do:
str=str.replace("s1", "s2");

Notice the LHS to explicitly capture the result of the replacement.

Hope it helps :)

edited Jan 20, 2012 at 8:46

stealthyninja

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answered Aug 9, 2011 at 18:54

Vivek

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Comments

Vik David · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-15 12:25:52Z

0

You're specifying a string as a regex. Try specifying a substring as the 1st param to replace(), like so:

var url = "http://localhost/xxx/index.html";
url.replace('index.html','changed.html');  // add 'gi' as 3rd param for all occurrences

See docs for String.replace

answered May 15, 2011 at 12:25

Vik David

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Comments

Kon · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-15 12:27:20Z

0

From http://www.devguru.com/technologies/ecmascript/quickref/regexp_special_characters.html:

The decimal point matches any single character except the new line character. So, for instance, with the string "The cat eats moths" the regular expression /.t/gi would match the letters 'at' in 'cat', 'at' in 'eats' and 'ot' in 'moths', but not the initial 'T' of 'The'.

So you have to escape the period:

url.replace(/index\.html/gi,filenames)

answered May 15, 2011 at 12:27

Kon

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3 Comments

Pointy Over a year ago

But the "." will in fact match the "." in "index.html" just fine.

Kon Over a year ago

@Pointy, yes... if you escape it.

Pointy Over a year ago

It will also match a "." if you don't escape it, because "." matches any character - including ".".

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