Replace the First Occurrence of Character in String in JS

# Replace the First Occurrence of a Character in a String in JS

Use the replace() method to replace the first occurrence of a character in a string.

The method takes a regular expression and a replacement string as parameters and returns a new string with one or more matches replaced.

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const str = 'hello world';

const replaceFirst = str.replace(/l/, '_');
console.log(replaceFirst); // 👉️ he_lo world

const replaceAll = str.replace(/l/g, '_');
console.log(replaceAll); // 👉️ he__o wor_d

We used the String.replace() method to replace the first occurrence of the l character in the string hello world.

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:

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const str = 'hello world';

const replaceFirst = str.replace(/l/, '_');
console.log(replaceFirst); // 👉️ he_lo world

const replaceAll = str.replace(/l/g, '_');
console.log(replaceAll); // 👉️ he__o wor_d

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

The second parameter the replace method takes is the replacement string.

In the example, we replaced the l character with an underscore _.

The String.replace() method returns a new string with the matches of the pattern replaced. The method doesn't change the original string.

Strings are immutable in JavaScript.

If you need to match the first occurrence of a character in a case-insensitive manner, add the i flag at the end of the regex.

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const str = 'HELLO WORLD';

const replaceFirst = str.replace(/l/i, '_');
console.log(replaceFirst); // 👉️ HE_LO WORLD

const replaceAll = str.replace(/l/gi, '_');
console.log(replaceAll); // 👉️ HE__O WOR_D

In this example, we used the i flag to perform a case-insensitive search for the l character in the string and replaced it with an underscore.

# You can also pass a string to the replace() method

You can also use a string as the first argument of the replace() method.

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const str = 'hello world';

const replaceFirst = str.replace('l', '_');
console.log(replaceFirst); // 👉️ he_lo world

The code sample replaces the first occurrence of l in the string with an underscore.

You can replace all occurrences of a character using a string argument by using the replaceAll() method.

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const str = 'hello world';

const replaceAll = str.replaceAll('l', '_');
console.log(replaceAll); // 👉️ he__o wor_d

The String.replaceAll() method returns a new string with all matches of a pattern replaced by the provided replacement.

The method takes the following parameters:

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

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

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

• Replace a Character at a specific Index in JavaScript
• Replace the Last Character in a String in JavaScript
• Replace Last Occurrence of Character in String in JavaScript
• Replace Multiple Characters in a String using JavaScript