Regex to replace multiple spaces with a single space

Question

Given a string like     The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED    What kind of jQuery or JavaScript magic can be used to keep spaces to only one space max   Goal     The dog has a long tail  and it is RED

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More robust   function trim word        word   word replace     x21- x7E   g           change non-printing chars to spaces     return word replace    s   s   g               remove leading trailing spaces

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var myregexp   new RegExp    2   g    str   str replace myregexp

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This is one solution  though it will target all space characters    The      dog        has a long tail       and it is RED   replace   s s  g         The dog has a long tail  and it is RED     Edit  This is probably better since it targets a space followed by 1 or more spaces    The      dog        has a long tail       and it is RED   replace      g         The dog has a long tail  and it is RED     Alternative method    The      dog        has a long tail       and it is RED   replace    2   g        The dog has a long tail  and it is RED     I didn t use   s   by itself since that replaces spaces that span 1 character multiple times and might be less efficient since it targets more than necessary   I didn t deeply test any of these so lmk if there are bugs   Also  if you re going to do string replacement remember to re-assign the variable property to its own replacement  eg   var string    foo  string   string replace  foo         Using jQuery prototype text   var el      span eq 0     el text  el text   replace   d

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is replace is not used  string   string split   W

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This script removes any white space  multiple spaces  tabs  returns  etc  between words and trims      Trims  amp  replaces any wihtespacing to single space between words String prototype clearExtraSpace   function      var  trimLeft       s           trimRight     s            multiple      s  g     return this replace  trimLeft      replace  trimRight      replace  multiple

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I suggest  string   string replace     g         for just spaces  OR  string   string replace    s   g   1      for turning multiple returns into a single return also

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I know we have to use regex  but during an interview  I was asked to do WITHOUT USING REGEX    slightlytyler helped me in coming with the below approach    x000D   x000D  const testStr    I   LOVE    STACKOVERFLOW   LOL   x000D   x000D  const removeSpaces   str    gt    x000D    const chars   str split      x000D    const nextChars   chars reduce  x000D       acc  c    gt    x000D        if  c            x000D          const lastChar   acc acc length - 1   x000D          if  lastChar            x000D            return acc  x000D            x000D          x000D        return     acc  c   x000D         x000D          x000D       x000D    const nextStr   nextChars join      x000D    return nextStr x000D     x000D   x000D  console log removeSpaces testStr    x000D   x000D   x000D

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var str    The      dog        has a long tail       and it is RED    str   str replace    2   g         EDIT  If you wish to replace all kind of whitespace characters the most efficient way would be like that   str   str replace   s 2   g

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Try this to replace multiple spaces with a single space    lt script type  text javascript  gt      var myStr    The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED        alert myStr       Output  The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED        var newStr   myStr replace      g            alert newStr       Output  The dog has a long tail  and it is RED    lt  script gt    Read more   Replacing Multiple Spaces with Single Space

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mouse pointer  touch   replace    s   s     s   g    1   should do the trick

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I know that I am late to the party  but I discovered a nice solution   Here it is   var myStr   myStr replace          g

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Here is an alternate solution if you do not want to use replace  replace spaces in a string without using replace javascript   x000D   x000D  var str  The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED    var rule   s 1   g   str   str split rule  join         document write str   x000D   x000D   x000D

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var text    xxx  df dfvdfv  df                          dfv  split    s  t  r  n     filter x  gt x  join         result    xxx df dfvdfv df dfv

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We can use the following regex explained with the help of sed system command  The similar regex can be used in other languages and platforms   Add the text into some file say test  manjeet-laptop Desktop manjeet  cat test  The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED     We can use the following regex to replace all white spaces with single space  manjeet-laptop Desktop manjeet  sed  s    1      g  test  The dog has a long tail  and it is RED     Hope this serves the purpose

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Since you seem to be interested in performance  I profiled these with firebug   Here are the results I got   str replace       g              - gt   380ms str replace    s s  g            - gt   390ms str replace     2   g            - gt   470ms str replace      g               - gt   790ms str replace           g          - gt  3250ms   This is on Firefox  running 100k string replacements   I encourage you to do your own profiling tests with firebug  if you think performance is an issue   Humans are notoriously bad at predicting where the bottlenecks in their programs lie    Also  note that IE 8 s developer toolbar also has a profiler built in -- it might be worth checking what the performance is like in IE

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Given that you also want to cover tabs  newlines  etc  just replace  s s  with        string   string replace   s s  g          If you really want to cover only spaces  and thus not tabs  newlines  etc   do so   string   string replace      g

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Jquery has trim   function which basically turns something like this     FOo   Bar       into  FOo Bar    var string      My     String with  Multiple lines       string trim       output  My String with Multiple lines    It is much more usefull because it is automatically removes empty spaces at the beginning and at the end of string as well  No regex needed

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For more control you can use the replace callback to handle the value   value    tags HUNT  tags HUNT         tags HUNT  tags HUNT  value replace new RegExp       s     tags     g     1   gt       1 trim         tags HUNT tags HUNT tags HUNT tags HUNT

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I have this method  I call it the Derp method for lack of a better name   while  str indexOf           -1        str   str replace     g            Running it in JSPerf gives some surprising results

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var string    The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED    var replaced   string replace     g          Or if you also want to replace tabs   var replaced   string replace   s  g

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Comprehensive unencrypted answer for newbies et al   This is for all of the dummies like me who test the scripts written by some of you guys which do not work   The following 3 examples are the steps I took to remove special characters AND extra spaces on the following 3 websites  all of which work perfectly   1  EtaVisa com 2  EtaStatus com 3  Tikun com  so I know that these work perfectly   We have chained these together with over 50 at a time and NO problems      This removed special characters   0-9 and allows for just letters  upper and LOWER case   function NoDoublesPls1     var str document getElementById  NoDoubles1    var regex    a-z  gi  str value str value replace regex              This removed special characters and allows for just letters  upper and LOWER case  and 0-9 AND spaces  function NoDoublesPls2     var str document getElementById  NoDoubles2    var regex    a-z 0-9  gi  str value str value replace regex              This removed special characters and allows for just letters  upper and LOWER case  and 0-9 AND spaces    The  replace   s s  g       at the end removes excessive spaces    when I used single quotes  it did not work   function NoDoublesPls3        var str document getElementById  NoDoubles3    var regex    a-z 0-9  gi  str value str value replace regex       replace   s s  g              NEXT   Save  3 as a  js    I called mine NoDoubles js    NEXT   Include your JS into your page    lt script language  JavaScript  src  js NoDoubles js  gt  lt  script gt    Include this in your form field   such as    lt INPUT type  text  name  Name       onKeyUp  NoDoublesPls3    onKeyDown  NoDoublesPls3    id  NoDoubles3   gt    So that it looks like this   lt INPUT type  text  name  Name  onKeyUp  NoDoublesPls3    onKeyDown  NoDoublesPls3    id  NoDoubles3   gt    This will remove special characters  allow for single spaces and remove extra spaces

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Also a possibility   str replace    s  g

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A more robust method  This takes care of also removing the initial and trailing spaces  if they exist  Eg      NOTE the possible initial and trailing spaces var str      The dog      has a long   tail  and it     is RED      str   str replace    s   s    s     s  g           str - gt   The dog has a long tail  and it is RED      Your example didn t have those spaces but they are a very common scenario too  and the accepted answer was only trimming those into single spaces  like    The     RED     which is not what you will typically need

[javascript] Regex to replace multiple spaces with a single space

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