Replace '-' with '-' in the JavaScript string

Question

I am trying to replace a single “-” character in a line with double dashes.

2015–09–01T16:00:00.000Z to be 2015-–09-–01T16:00:00.000Z 

This is the code I use, but it does not work:

 var temp = '2015–09–01T16:00:00.000Z' temp.replace(/-/g,'--') 

Answer 1

In JavaScript, Strings are immutable. Thus, when changing a string, a new string object will be created with the modification.

In your case, replace replaced the characters, but returns a new line. You need to store this in a variable in order to use it.

For instance,

 var temp = '2015–09–01T16:00:00.000Z'; temp = temp.replace(/–/g,'--'); 

---

Note The line that you indicated in the question when copying, I realized that this is a different character , but similar to – and this is not the same as a hyphen ( - ). The character codes for these characters are as follows

 console.log('–'.charCodeAt(0)); // 8211: en dash console.log('-'.charCodeAt(0)); // 45: hyphen 

Answer 2

The hyphen character – which you have in the string is different from the character you have in RegExp - . Although they are alike, they are different characters.

In this case, the correct RegExp is temp.replace(/–/g,'--')

Answer 3

Probably the easiest would be to simply use split and join.

 var temp = '2015–09–01T16:00:00.000Z'.split("-").join("--");