Remove all non-alphanumeric Characters from a String in JS

Remove all non-alphanumeric Characters from a String in JS #

Use the String.replace() method to remove all non-alphanumeric characters from a string, e.g. str.replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '');.

The replace() method will remove all non-alphanumeric characters from the string by replacing them with empty strings.

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const str = 'A!@#b$%^c&*(';

const replaced = str.replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '');
console.log(replaced); // 👉️ Abc

The String.replace() method returns a new string with one, some, or all matches of a regular expression replaced with the provided replacement.

The method takes the following parameters:

Strings are immutable in JavaScript.

The forward slashes / / mark the beginning and end of the regular expression.

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const str = 'A!@#b$%^c&*(';

const replaced = str.replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '');
console.log(replaced); // 👉️ Abc

The square brackets [] are called a character class.

The caret ^ symbol means "NOT the following". In our case, this means not any letter in the range of a-z and not any number in the range of 0-9.

The i flag makes our match case-insensitive by targeting all uppercase and lowercase characters.

If your use case requires you to also preserve spaces, hyphens or other characters, add them between the square brackets [].

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const str = 'A!@# b$% ^c&-*(';

const replaced = str.replace(/[^a-z0-9 -]/gi, '');
console.log(replaced); // 👉️ A b c-

The code sample preserves all alphanumeric characters, spaces and hyphens. You could adjust the regex to your needs by adding or removing characters between the square brackets [].

If you have to remove the non-alphanumeric characters from a string often, define a reusable function.

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function removeNonAlphanumeric(string) {
  return string.replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '');
}

console.log(removeNonAlphanumeric('A(@#(@B$C')); // 👉️ ABC
console.log(removeNonAlphanumeric('A_@#B(***C((_D')); // 👉️ ABCD

The removeNonAlphanumeric() function takes a string as a parameter and removes all non-alphanumeric characters from the string.

Remove all non-alphanumeric Characters from a String using \W #

You can also use the \W special character to shorten your regex and remove all non-alphanumeric characters from a string.

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function removeNonAlphanumeric(string) {
  return string.replace(/\W/g, '');
}

console.log(removeNonAlphanumeric('A(@#(@B$C')); // 👉️ ABC
console.log(removeNonAlphanumeric('A_@#B(***C((_D')); // 👉️ ABCD

The \W special character is equivalent to [^A-Za-z0-9_].

In other words, the \W character matches:

• any character that is not a word character from the basic Latin alphabet
• non-digit characters
• not underscores

Note that the \W special character doesn't remove the underscores from the string.

If you also need to remove the underscores, use the code sample from the previous subheading.

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function removeNonAlphanumeric(string) {
  return string.replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '');
}

console.log(removeNonAlphanumeric('A(@#(@B$C')); // 👉️ ABC
console.log(removeNonAlphanumeric('A_@#B(***C((_D')); // 👉️ ABCD

If you ever need help reading a regular expression, check out this regular expression cheatsheet by MDN.

It contains a table with the name and the meaning of each special character with examples.