Simple Javascript Replace not working

Question

This seems so simple and trivial but it is not working. Here is my javascript:

var url = "/computers/";
console.log(url);
url.replace(/\//gi, " ");
console.log(url);

And here is the output in my browsers console:

/computers/
/computers/

As you can see nothing changes. As you can tell from the code I'm trying to replace the forward slashes with spaces. What am I doing wrong?

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 02 '12 at 14:49

21

url = url.replace(/\//gi, " ");

answered Jun 02 '12 at 14:49

galchen

6

man I feel a bit dumb. Thanks for that. – greatwitenorth Jun 02 '12 at 14:51
2

LoL. Epic. I just ran into this same issue and this answer saved me from emailing Brendan Eich to tell him that JS replace doesn't work :) – netpoetica Jan 02 '13 at 05:09
@greatwitenorth ㅋㅋㅋㅋ did the same mistake. – Cԃաԃ Mar 04 '14 at 01:09
Gosh, was fighting for an hour with that. Feeling dumb as hell now. Thanks for saving me! – morkro Oct 06 '14 at 15:24

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 02 '12 at 14:51

2

Nothing changes because you're not assigning the result of the replacement to a variable. Add url = url.replace()

answered Jun 02 '12 at 14:51

dda

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 02 '12 at 14:51

0

url.replace(/\//gi, " "); returns the resulting string (in javascript you can't modify an existing string), you are not assigning it to anything

assign it like so:

url = url.replace(/\//gi, " ");

answered Jun 02 '12 at 14:51

Esailija

3 Answers3