Javascript + Regex newbie question

[GCoder]

Hi, I am relatively new to regex and have a simple question.

I want to find two words within a string (and everything in between to
the two words and replace it with something else.

The specific string is:

....[lots of
text]..................thumbnailUrl=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&..........................[more
text]



i want to snip out the everything in between and including

thumbnailUrl=

and the

&

and all the text in between the two words. The text between the two
words is not a constant number and contains the % sign.

This is what I was thinking but its not working properly:

foo = foo.replace(/[thumbnailUrl=.*]-[&]/i, 'replacement text');

Can someone please help??

 

[petermichaux]

...[lots of
text]..................thumbnailUrl=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&..........................[more
text]

This is what I was thinking but its not working properly:

foo = foo.replace(/[thumbnailUrl=.*]-[&]/i, 'replacement text');

I think you want

foo = foo.replace(/thumbnailUrl=.*?&/,"replacement text")

Maybe you still want the 'i' flag too if thumbnailUrl might be
capitalized differently.

- Peter

 

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <[email protected]>,
dated Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:14:08 remote, seen in

foo = foo.replace(/thumbnailUrl=.*?&/,"replacement text")

foo = foo.replace(/thumbnailUrl=[^?]*&/, "replacement text")

may be safer.

 

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

[...] (e-mail address removed) posted :

foo = foo.replace(/thumbnailUrl=.*?&/,"replacement text")

foo = foo.replace(/thumbnailUrl=[^?]*&/, "replacement text")

may be safer.

But not equivalent. Peter proposed non-greedy matching.
Probably you meant

foo = foo.replace(/thumbnailUrl=[^&]*&/, "replacement text")


PointedEars