Javascript - Replace '%20' spaces

Question

var loc_array = document.location.href.split('/');
var linkElement = document.getElementById("waBackButton");
var newT = document.createTextNode(loc_array[loc_array.length-2]); 
var repl = newT.replace('%20',' ');
linkElement.appendChild(repl);

Anyone know why this causes the text to not show up?

Answer 1

Why not just do

unescape(document.location.href);

Answer 2

Anyone know why this causes the text to not show up?

newT is created by document.createTextNode, which returns a Text object - not a String object.

Observing the Text prototype shows there is no replace function. The closest would be replaceWholeText.

E.g.:

var newT = document.createTextNode(loc_array[loc_array.length-2]); 
newT.replaceWholeText(unescape(newT.valueOf());

As others have already mentioned, though, you should just create the text node from unescape directly.

Like:

linkElement.appendChild(document.createTextNode(unescape(loc_array[loc_array.length-2])));