Replace all non Alpha Numeric characters New Lines and multiple White Space with one Space

Question

I m looking for a neat RegEx solution to replace   All non Alpha-Numeric Characters All NewLines All multiple instances of white space   With a single space    For those playing at home  the following does work   text replace    a-z0-9  gmi       replace   s  g          My thinking is RegEx is probably powerful enough to achieve this in one statement  The components i think id need are     a-z0-9  - to Remove non Alpha-Numeric characters   s  - match any collections of spaces  r  n  r - match all new line  gmi - global  multi-line  case insensitive   However  i cant seem to style the regex in the right way  the following doesn t work   text replace    a-z0-9   s   r  n  r gmi            Input  234 amp    Me 2 2013 1080p x264 5 1 BluRay S01   amp asd 05 S1E5 1x05 1x5     Desired Output  234 Me 2 2013 1080p x264 5 1 BluRay S01 asd 05 S1E5 1x05 1x5

User · Answer

A saw a different post that also had diacritical marks  which is great   s replace    a-zA-Z0-9  -   s  g

User · Answer

Jonny 5 beat me to it  I was going to suggest using the  W  without the  s as in    text replace   W  g        This covers white space as well

User · Answer

Well I think you just need to add a quantifier to each pattern  Also the carriage-return thing is a little funny   text replace    a-z0-9    s  gmi          edit The  s thing matches  r and  n too

User · Answer

To replace with dashes  do the following   text replace    W -  g

User · Answer

For anyone still strugging  like me     after the above more expert replies  this works in Visual Studio 2019  outputString   Regex Replace inputString    quot  W quot    quot   quot     Remember to add using System Text RegularExpressions

User · Answer

Since   a-z0-9  character class contains all that is not alnum  it contains white characters too    text replace    a-z0-9   gi

User · Answer

Be aware  that  W leaves the underscore  A short equivalent for   a-zA-Z0-9  would be   W    text replace    W    g          W is the negation of shorthand  w for  A-Za-z0-9   word characters   including the underscore   Example at regex101 com

User · Answer

This is an old post of mine  the accepted answers are good for the most part  However i decided to benchmark each solution and another obvious one  just for fun   I wondered if there was a difference between the regex patterns on different browsers with different sized strings    So basically i used jsPerf on    Testing in Chrome 65 0 3325   Windows 10 0 0 0 Testing in Edge 16 16299 0   Windows 10 0 0 0   The regex patterns i tested were      W    g    a-z0-9   gi     a-zA-Z0-9   g   I loaded them up with a string length of random characters   length 5000 length 1000 length 200   Example javascript i used var newstr   str replace    W    g        Each run consisted of 50 or more sample on each regex  and i run them 5 times on each browser    Lets race our horses   Results                                  Chrome                  Edge Chars   Pattern                 Ops Sec     Deviation   Op Sec      Deviation ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5 000      W    g                19 977 80  1 09         10 820 40  1 32 5 000      a-z0-9   gi           19 901 60  1 49         10 902 00  1 20 5 000      a-zA-Z0-9   g         19 559 40  1 96         10 916 80  1 13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 000      W    g                96 239 00  1 65         52 358 80  1 41 1 000      a-z0-9   gi           97 584 40  1 18         52 105 00  1 60 1 000      a-zA-Z0-9   g         96 965 80  1 10         51 864 60  1 76 ------------------------------------------------------------------------   200      W    g               480 318 60  1 70        261 030 40  1 80   200      a-z0-9   gi          476 177 80  2 01        261 751 60  1 96   200      a-zA-Z0-9   g        486 423 00  0 80        258 774 20  2 15   Truth be known  Regex in both browsers  taking into consideration deviation  were nearly indistinguishable  however i think if it run this even more times the results would become a little more clearer  but not by much     Theoretical scaling for 1 character                              Chrome                        Edge Chars   Pattern             Ops Sec     Scaled            Op Sec    Scaled ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5 000      W    g            19 977 80  99 889 000       10 820 40  54 102 000 5 000      a-z0-9   gi       19 901 60  99 508 000       10 902 00  54 510 000 5 000      a-zA-Z0-9   g     19 559 40  97 797 000       10 916 80  54 584 000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------  1 000      W    g            96 239 00  96 239 000       52 358 80  52 358 800 1 000      a-z0-9   gi       97 584 40  97 584 400       52 105 00  52 105 000 1 000      a-zA-Z0-9   g     96 965 80  96 965 800       51 864 60  51 864 600 ------------------------------------------------------------------------    200      W    g           480 318 60  96 063 720      261 030 40  52 206 080   200      a-z0-9   gi      476 177 80  95 235 560      261 751 60  52 350 320   200      a-zA-Z0-9   g    486 423 00  97 284 600      258 774 20  51 754 840   I wouldn t take to much into these results as this is not really a significant differences  all we can really tell is edge is slower  o   Additionally that i was super bored     Anyway you can run the benchmark for your self   Jsperf Benchmark here

[javascript] Replace all non Alpha Numeric characters, New Lines, and multiple White Space with one Space

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