What does /.*=/ mean in jquery/javascript?

Question

What does /.*=/ mean in the following jquery?

var id=this.href.replace(/.*=/,'');
this.id='delete_link_'+id;

Answer 1

That's a regular expression that will select all characters before and including an equal sign.

The '.' means any character other than a newline.

The '*' means the character before it can appear any number of times.

The '=' is the regular equals sign.

So any character ('.') any number of times ('*') followed by an equals sign ('=').

Answer 2

That's a regular expression. The code will replace everything before the '='-sign (and the equal sign) with an empty string. So it will delete the = and everything before it.

My guess is that your url looks something like this http://mysite.com?id=3 then your variable id will contain 3.

Answer 3

The /.*=/ is a regular expression. It replaces any number of characters followed by an equals sign with an empty string.

Answer 4

It's a regular expression (or regex).

A regex is a search and replace method which uses pattern matching to locate parts of a string that fit a pattern. (Similar to how a wildcard dir *.* lists all the files in the current directory).