Extract a Number from a String in JavaScript

Extract a Number from a String in JavaScript #

To extract a number from a string, call the replace method on the string, passing in a regular expression to replace all non-digit characters with an empty string, e.g. str.replace(/\D/g, '').

The replace method returns a new string containing all the numbers from the original string.

Copied!
const str = 'hello 123 world';

const replaced = str.replace(/\D/g, ''); // 👉️ '123'
console.log(replaced);

let num;

if (replaced !== '') {
  num = Number(replaced); // 👉️ 123
}

console.log(num)

The first argument we passed to the String.replace method is a regular expression that we want to match in the string.

The \D character matches a character that is NOT a digit.

We have added the g (global) flag to match all non-digit characters and replace them with an empty string.

Our if statement is there to check if the original string contains any numbers.

If it doesn't we don't want to convert an empty string to a number, because that evaluates to 0, which would be a bug in our program.

Copied!
console.log(Number('')); // 👉️ 0

Here is a complete example of the case where the string does not contain numbers:

Copied!
const str = 'hello world';

const replaced = str.replace(/\D/g, ''); // 👉️ ''
console.log(replaced);

let num;

if (replaced !== '') {
  // 👇️ never runs
  num = Number(replaced);
}

console.log(num); // 👉️ undefined

We replace all non-digit characters with empty strings, and because the string contains only non-digit characters, String.replace returns an empty string.

Another common approach, which I would not recommend, is to use the String.match method.

Copied!
const str = 'hello 123 world';

const replaced = str.match(/\d+/); // 👉️ ['123']

let num;

if (replaced !== null) {
  num = Number(replaced[0]); // 👉️ 123
}
console.log(num);

We pass a regular expression to the String.match method.

The \d character matches a digit from 0 to 9. We have added the + character, which means match one or more, to match all digits in the string.

In case the String.match method didn't match anything, it returns null.

To be sure we don't try to convert null to a number, which would return 0, we conditionally check in our if statement.

Copied!
console.log(Number(null)); // 👉️ 0

For the sake of completeness, here is the case, where the string contains no digits, when using match.

Copied!
const str = 'hello world';

const replaced = str.match(/\d+/); // 👉️ null

let num;

if (replaced !== null) {
  // 👇️ never runs
  num = replaced[0];
}
console.log(num); // 👉️ undefined

In the code snippet, the match method returns null because the string contains no digits.