How to remove the hash from window.location with Javascript without page refresh?

Question

So if I have

http://example.com#something

how do I remove #something?

doing window.location.hash = '' removes the something, but leaves the #

Edit: To be clear, I was hoping to accomplish this without refreshing the page

Answer 1

Initial question:

window.location.href.substr(0, window.location.href.indexOf('#'))

or

window.location.href.split('#')[0]

both will return the url without the hash or anything after it.

With regards to your edit:

Any change to window.location will trigger a page refresh. You can change window.location.hash without triggering the refresh (though the window will jump if your hash matches an id on the page), but you can't get rid of the hash sign. Take your pick for which is worse...