Javascript and backslashes replace

Question

here is my string:

var str = "This is my \string";

This is my code:

var replaced = str.replace("/\\/", "\\\\");

I can't get my output to be:

"This is my \\string"

I have tried every combination I can think of for the regular expression and the replacement value.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

The string doesn't contain a backslash, it contains the \s escape sequence.

var str = "This is my \\string";

And if you want a regular expression, you should have a regular expression, not a string.

var replaced = str.replace(/\\/, "\\\\");

Answer 2

The problem is that the \ in your first line isn't even recognized. It thinks the backslash is going to mark an escape sequence, but \s isn't an escape character, so it's ignored. Your var str is interpreted as just "This is my string". Try str.indexOf("\\") - you'll find it's -1, since there is no backslash at all. If you control the content of str, do what David says - add another \ to escape the first.

Answer 3

I haven't tried this, but the following should work

var replaced = str.replace((new RegExp("\s"),"\\s");

Essentially you don't want to replace "\", you want to replace the character represented by the "\s" escape sequence.

Unfortunately you're going to need to do this for every letter of the alphabet, every number, symbol, etc in order to cover all bases