Allow foreign characters with regex while excluding special symbols

Question

Allow foreign characters with regex while excluding special symbols

While browsing, I came across this thread: Is there a regular expression to match non-English characters?. It provides a regex to remove foreign characters using the code snippet

str = str.replace(/[^\x00-\x7F]+/g, "");

.

My goal is slightly different - I want to retain these foreign characters while filtering out special characters, but still allowing '- _. Essentially, I'm looking to allow single quotes, hyphens, underscores, and empty spaces.

So my question is, how can I modify the existing JavaScript regex to achieve this? Currently, it looks like this:

str = str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9'-_ ]/g, "");

For instance, let's consider the character 'ü'. Unfortunately, simply adding it to the existing regex doesn't work:

str = str.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9'-_ ü]/g, "");

javascript regex

Answer 1

Answer №1

Dealing with characters in Unicode can be quite tricky as you have to decide whether to include a large number of Unicode letters or exclude several special characters. Essentially, the goal is to create a regex pattern that allows only characters falling under the general categories for Unicode letters (Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, Lo).

While some regex flavors support these Unicode general categories directly, JavaScript unfortunately does not. However, it is still possible using the Unicode addon for the XRegExp library. Here's an example:

XRegExp.replace(text, "[^\\p{Ll}\\p{Lu}\\p{Lt}\\p{Lm}\\p{Lo}'\\- _]", '', 'all');

Alternatively, if you prefer constructing a detailed JavaScript regex, you can utilize the CSET JavaScript library. Here's how you can use it to create your regex:

var regex = /[\u0000-\u001f!-&(-....<truncated>...－\u3104\u312e-\u3130\u318f-㆟\u31b8-\u31ef㈀-㏿\u4db6-䷿ ...<truncated>... -･\uffbf-\uffc1\uffc8-\uffc9\uffd0-\uffd1\uffd8-\uffd9\uffdd-\uffff]|[\ud803-...\u179a]\](https://example.com)

After constructing the regex, you can simply use the replace method to remove unwanted characters from a string.

Edit: If you also want to allow numbers, you can modify the regex accordingly by including the Unicode general categories `Nd` and `Nl`. Here's a sample regex to achieve this:

var regex = /[\u0000-\u001f!-&(-....<truncated>... ［-｀｛-･\uffbf-\uffc1\uffc8-\uffc9\uffd0-/:-@[-^`{-©«-´¶-¹»-¿×÷˂-˅˒-˟˥-˫˭˯-\u036f͵......西风]()|[\ud800-\ud83f\ud869-\udbff]/g;

Answer 2

Dealing with characters in Unicode can be quite tricky as you have to decide whether to include a large number of Unicode letters or exclude several special characters. Essentially, the goal is to create a regex pattern that allows only characters falling under the general categories for Unicode letters (Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, Lo).

While some regex flavors support these Unicode general categories directly, JavaScript unfortunately does not. However, it is still possible using the Unicode addon for the XRegExp library. Here's an example:

XRegExp.replace(text, "[^\\p{Ll}\\p{Lu}\\p{Lt}\\p{Lm}\\p{Lo}'\\- _]", '', 'all');

Alternatively, if you prefer constructing a detailed JavaScript regex, you can utilize the CSET JavaScript library. Here's how you can use it to create your regex:

var regex = /[\u0000-\u001f!-&(-....<truncated>...－\u3104\u312e-\u3130\u318f-㆟\u31b8-\u31ef㈀-㏿\u4db6-䷿ ...<truncated>... -･\uffbf-\uffc1\uffc8-\uffc9\uffd0-\uffd1\uffd8-\uffd9\uffdd-\uffff]|[\ud803-...\u179a]\](https://example.com)

After constructing the regex, you can simply use the replace method to remove unwanted characters from a string.

Edit: If you also want to allow numbers, you can modify the regex accordingly by including the Unicode general categories `Nd` and `Nl`. Here's a sample regex to achieve this:

var regex = /[\u0000-\u001f!-&(-....<truncated>... ［-｀｛-･\uffbf-\uffc1\uffc8-\uffc9\uffd0-/:-@[-^`{-©«-´¶-¹»-¿×÷˂-˅˒-˟˥-˫˭˯-\u036f͵......西风]()|[\ud800-\ud83f\ud869-\udbff]/g;

Answer 3

Answer №2

In JavaScript, there is no built-in unicode character class for Regular expressions. However, you can manually include or exclude specific characters using the following method:

str = str.replace(/[!@#\$%\^&\*\(\)\{\}\?<>\+:;",\.\\]/g, "");

Alternatively, you can utilize a library like XRegExp

Answer 4

In JavaScript, there is no built-in unicode character class for Regular expressions. However, you can manually include or exclude specific characters using the following method:

str = str.replace(/[!@#\$%\^&\*\(\)\{\}\?<>\+:;",\.\\]/g, "");

Alternatively, you can utilize a library like XRegExp

Allow foreign characters with regex while excluding special symbols

Answer №1

Answer №2

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