正则表达式：转义\\“ / \\\\” / g不起作用

Question

I have a string that goes something like this:

/* ACTUAL DATA */

\n\nsampleArr[0] = {
    \n\t\tid: '28375023',
    \n\t\ttelephoneNumber: 5558378402,
    \n\t\tage: \" 4 \",
    \n\t\tmessageID: '287592',
    \n\t\tcommentID: '23845702',
    \n\t\tfoobar: 'foobar' \n\t
};

I am able to remove all \\n\\t\\t using regex but just cannot deal with age section where it has \\" 4 \\".

 const input = String.raw`{ name: 'foo', age: 12, address: \\"1212 Mason st. \\", zipcode: '12345', state: \\"CA\\" }`; console.log(input.replace(/\\\\"/g, "'")); 

My main goal is to turn this into an object. However, the escaped characters \\" are creating some major issues. I tried to use str.replace(/\\\\"/g, "'") and it seems like it is not matching nor replacing it. However, on https://regex101.com , it definitely is selecting all \\" s. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Assuming the backslashes escaping the double quotation marks in your input are physical backslashes, then your replacement should work, so something else must be going on.

 const input = String.raw`{ name: 'foo', age: 12, address: \\"1212 Mason st. \\", zipcode: '12345', state: \\"CA\\" }`; console.log(input.replace(/\\\\"/g, "'")); 

In the above, we use template strings to specify multi-line input, and String.raw to avoid interpreting the \\" escapes (just as a handy way of providing the input string).

Note that this will fail if the strings themselves contain escaped quotation marks, as in

address: \"685 9th \"A\" Main Rd.\",

The ultimate solution is to have the back-end or whoever is producing these strings not escape the double quotation marks unless they occur within the strings. In other words, produce proper JSON.