Javascript regex replace character if preceded AND followed by a letter

Question

Basically I am working with a string that is a json string and I would like to turn it into a real json (by using the JSON.parse()) but there are some quotation marks in the middle of the sentences.

Example: '{"author": "Jonah D"Almeida", ... }' (I want to replace the one in between D and Almeida)

As it already has quotation marks around the whole sentence, javascript gives an error because it can't create a json out of it and so, to solve that basically I want to replace the quotation mark in the middle of the sentence for a ' but only if it has letters preceeding and following the quotation mark.

My thought: myString.replace('letter before... "... letter after', "'")

Any idea how can I get the right expression for this? Basically I just want to know the regex expression the check if before and after the " quote it has letters.

Answer 1

The OP... "Basically I am working with a string that is a json string"

The above example is not what the OP refers to as json string . The OP's example data string already is invalid JSON.

Thus the first thing was to fix the process which generates such data.

Because...

"parsing valid JSON data will return a perfectly valid object, and in case of the OP's use case a correctly escaped string value as well. "

... proof...

 const testSample_A = { author: "Jonah D'Almeida" }; const testSample_B = { author: 'Jonah D"Almeida' }; const testSample_C = { author: 'Jonah D\'Almeida' }; const testSample_D = { author: "Jonah D\"Almeida" }; console.log({ testSample_A, testSample_B, testSample_C, testSample_D, }); console.log('JSON.stringify(...)... ', { testSample_A: JSON.stringify(testSample_A), testSample_B: JSON.stringify(testSample_B), testSample_C: JSON.stringify(testSample_C), testSample_D: JSON.stringify(testSample_D), }); console.log('JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(...))... ', { testSample_A: JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(testSample_A)), testSample_B: JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(testSample_B)), testSample_C: JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(testSample_C)), testSample_D: JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(testSample_D)), });

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Edit

A sanitizing task which exactly follows the OP's requirements nevertheless can be achieved based on a regex which features both a positive lookahead and a positive lookbehind ... either for basic latin only /(?<=\w)"(?=\w)/gm or more international with unicode escapes ... /(?<=\p{L})"(?=\p{L})/gmu

 console.log('Letter unicode escapes...', ` {"author": "Jonah D"Almeida", ... } {"author": "Jon"ah D"Almeida", ... } {"author": "Jon"ah D"Alme"ida", ... }`.replace(/(?<=\p{L})"(?=\p{L})/gmu, '\\"') ); console.log('Basic Latin support...', ` {"author": "Jonah D"Almeida", ... } {"author": "Jon"ah D"Almeida", ... } {"author": "Jon"ah D"Alme"ida", ... }`.replace(/(?<=\w)"(?=\w)/gm, '\\"') ); console.log( 'sanitized and parsed string data...', JSON.parse(`[ { "author": "Jonah D"Almeida" }, { "author": "Jon"ah D"Almeida" }, { "author": "Jon"ah D"Alme"ida" } ]`.replace(/(?<=\p{L})"(?=\p{L})/gmu, '\\"')) );

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