Best way to remove thousand separators from string amount using a regex

Question

I have variables that contain amounts and would like to remove the (US) thousand separators but also have to cover the scenario that there may be non-US formatted amounts where the comma is used for the decimals instead of for the thousands where I don't want to replace the comma.

Examples:

• 1,234,567.00 needs to become 1234567.00
• 1,234.00 needs to become 1234.00
  but
• 1.234.567,00 needs to remain unchanged as not US format (i.e. comma here is used for decimals)
• 1.234,00 needs to remain unchanged as not US format (i.e. comma here is used for decimals)

I was thinking of using the following but wasn't sure about it as I am pretty new to Regex:

myVar.replace(/(\d+),(?=\d{3}(\D|$))/g, "$1");

What is best solution here? Note: I just need to cover normal amounts like the above examples, no special cases like letter / number combinations or things like 1,2,3 etc.

Solution 1

This one may suit your needs:

,(?=[\d,]*\.\d{2}\b)

Debuggex Demo

Solution 2

if (string.match(/\.\d{2}$/) {
    string = string.replace(',', '');
}

or

string.replace(/,(?=.*\.\d+)/g, '');

Solution 3

Replace /,(?=\d*[\.,])/g with empty string?

http://regexr.com/39v2m

Solution 4

You can use replace() method to remove all the commas. They will be replaced with an empty string. I'm using reg exp with lookahead assertion to detect if a comma is followed by three digits, if so given comma will be removed.

string.replace(/,(?=\d{3})/g, '')

Examples:

'12,345,678.90'.replace(/,(?=\d{3})/g, '')
// '12345678.90'

'1,23,456.78'.replace(/,(?=\d{3})/g, '')
// '1,23456.78'

'$1,234.56'.replace(/,(?=\d{3})/g, '')
// '$1234.56'

View more solutions

Comments

[tomdemuyt]

Will you always have 2 decimals? If not, then you will never know whether 1,234 is 1000 + 234 or 1 + 0.234

[user2571510]

Thanks - Yes, I will.

[Julian]

for me, this worked: ,(?=\d{3})

[user2571510]

Thanks for this - wouldnt I need to wrap this in / /g to cover all instances of thousand separators ?

[user2571510]

Thanks for this as well ! I am trying to understand what makes the most sense here for me.

[albanx]

thank you for the Debuggex Demo web site, never seen it before really great one the with the graph.

[user2571510]

Thanks - I would like to avoid using IF statements here.

[sp00m]

@user2571510 Yes, you'll have to enable the global flag: /theregex/g.

[user2571510]

Thanks, All - this works very well and I like the workflow image.

[Mehdi Faraji]

This answer worked for me

[eomeroff]

This works until you have Argentine Peso ARS '1.222,222'.replace(/,(?=\d{3})/g, '') evaluates to '1.222222'