I want to remove the following characters: [, ], ", \ if any are at the beginning or end of a string, but not if they are in the middle.

So, if the string is ""\[\]][hello" world "\[\"]], I'd like it to become, hello" world

I can't figure out how to do it. I've tried these and many others and none seems to work:

string.replace(/^[\[ |\] |\" |\\ ]$,"")
string.replace(/^[\[ \] \" \\ ]$/,"")

Any help would be much appreciated.

CodePudding user response：

You're close. You need two alternatives, one for the beginning and another for the end. Each should then be a character set in [] listing all the characters you want to remove.

You also need the g modifier to replace twice in the same string.

let string = '""\[\]][hello" world "\[\"]]';

console.log(string.replace(/^["\[\]\\] |["\[\]\\] $/g, ''));

CodePudding user response：

I split the problem into following subproblems:

1. Find these characters at the start of a string
2. Find these characters at the end of a string

I came up with following regex-patterns to solve these:

1. /(^["\[]] )/g
2. /["\[]] $/g

When working with regex, I recommend following site: regexr.com/6d193