Replace the First Character in a String in JavaScript

Replace the First Character in a String #

To replace the first character in a string:

1. Assign the character at index 0 to a variable.
2. Use the String.replace() method to replace the character in the string.
3. The replace method will return a new string with the first character replaced.

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const str = 'best';

const char = str[0];
console.log(char); // 👉️ b

const replaced = str.replace(char, 't');
console.log(replaced); // 👉️ test

The arguments we passed to the String.replace method are:

1. A substring to be replaced in the string
2. The replacement string

You will most commonly see the replace method being passed a regular expression as the first parameter. However, we can also use a string for a literal match.

By default, the replace method replaces only the first match in the string, so it does exactly what we need.

Alternatively, you can use the substring method.

To replace the first character in a string:

1. Use the substring() method to get a substring starting at the second character.
2. Prepend the replacement character using the addition + operator.

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const str = 'best';

const replaced = 't' + str.substring(1);
console.log(replaced); // 👉️ test

We replaced the character b with the character t.

The only argument we passed to the String.substring method is the start index - the index of the first character to be included in the returned string.

We omit the first character of the original string and prepend a replacement string to the rest.

Note that the substring method doesn't change the original string, it returns a new string containing the specified part of the original string.

This approach also works if you need to replace the first character with multiple characters.

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const str = 'best';

const replaced = 'the t' + str.substring(1);
console.log(replaced); // 👉️ the test

The example replaces the character at index 0 with multiple characters.

Further Reading #

• Replace Multiple Characters in a String using JavaScript
• Replace the First Occurrence of Character in String in JS
• Replace Last Occurrence of Character in String in JavaScript
• Replace the Last Character in a String in JavaScript
• Remove Special Characters from a String in JavaScript
• Replace the first N characters in a String in JavaScript
• Check if String contains only Letters and Spaces in JS
• Remove all non-alphanumeric Characters from String in JS
• Check if String contains Special Characters in JavaScript