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JavaScript replace special HTML (&character; format) character in a String

Ivar
Arwa

I’m trying to replace the square root symbol which is written in html as “√” (√). I used the following line to replace it with a space but it does not change the String at all.

dig = document.getElementById("dig").innerHTML;
dig = dig.replace(/'√'/g, ' ');
console.log(dig);
<div id="dig">&radic;25</div>

What am I doing wrong here?

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Answer

This answer is valid if you are accessing the innerText or innerHTML atribute of an Element.

let s = document.getElementById("sqrt")
console.log("Text", s.innerText)
console.log(s.innerText.replace(/√/g, ""))
console.log(s.innerHTML.replace(/√/g, ""))
<div id="sqrt"> &radic;2 == 1.4142</div>

As you can see &radic; gets evaluated and it’s value is then √ instead of that. The javascript replace method cannot understand that √ is &radic so you can just replace √.

Also there is no need to use regex, you can just do the same with "√"