Removing quotes from a string

JavaScript:
Removing quotes from a string

How to:

Imagine you’ve got a string that’s wrapped in double quotes, like "\"Hello, World!\"" and you want the pure, unquoted text. Here’s a quick JavaScript snippet to free your string from those quote shackles:

let quotedString = "\"Hello, World!\"";
let unquotedString = quotedString.replace(/^"|"$/g, '');
console.log(unquotedString); // Output: Hello, World!

And if you’re dealing with single quotes? Just tweak the regex a bit:

let singleQuotedString = "'Hello, World!'";
let unquotedString = singleQuotedString.replace(/^'|'$/g, '');
console.log(unquotedString); // Output: Hello, World!

Or what if your string is a mix of both? No sweat:

let mixedQuotedString = "\"'Hello, World!'\"";
let unquotedString = mixedQuotedString.replace(/^["']|["']$/g, '');
console.log(unquotedString); // Output: 'Hello, World!'

Deep Dive

Before JSON took over, escaping quotes was a wild west of backslashes and hacks. Early programming languages didn’t always play nice with quotes which meant a lot of manual string manipulation. Now, with standardized data formats, removing quotes is often about cleaning up inputs before they’re processed as JSON or storing text without formatting conflicts.

Alternatives to .replace()? Sure! You could split and join a string on quotes, use slice if you’re certain of your quotes’ positions, or even regex match to pull out the needed text. It all depends on the context.

But don’t forget about edge cases: quotes inside quotes, escaped quotes, and international characters. Think of your string as a potential minefield of exceptions, and tread carefully. Modern JavaScript engines are optimized to handle regex operations efficiently, so they’re generally the go-to, but it’s always worth checking performance for heavy data processing tasks.

JavaScript:Removing quotes from a string

How to:

Deep Dive

See Also

JavaScript:
Removing quotes from a string