Remove Illegal Characters From A File Name But Leave Spaces

I have the following line of code to remove illegal characters from a file name: str= str.replace(/([^a-z0-9]+)/gi, '-'); That works fine but it also removes the spaces, how can I

Solution 1:

Illegal characters are listed here. To replace them use this regex /[/\\?%*:|"<>]/g like this:

var filename = "f?:i/le>  n%a|m\\e.ext";

filename = filename.replace(/[/\\?%*:|"<>]/g, '-');

console.log(filename);

Solution 2:

You are searching for all non numeric and roman letters. If you want to exclude the space from being replaced:

Just add a space to the selection to exclude :)

str= str.replace(/([^a-z0-9 ]+)/gi, '-');
// add a space here -------^

Solution 3:

You can use \W+

\W (non-word-character) matches any single character that doesn't match by \w (same as [^a-zA-Z0-9_]) Source:https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/howto/Regexe.html

str = str.replace(/(\W+)/gi, '-');

Solution 4:

Add the '\s' whitespace to your exclusion.

str = str.replace(/([^a-z0-9\s]+)/gi, '-');