Properly Escaping Double Quotes in a Javascript Regular Expression Range

How do I modify my Javascript Regular expression to return the string: """Collawan Annals of Plastic Surger Jan 1999 vol 42 pg 21 26."""?

How do I properly escape a double quote in a regexp range?

(attempt in Firebug):

&g开发者_如何学运维t;>> var input="Collawn \"Annals of Plastic Surgery\" Jan 1999 vol 42 pg 21 26"
>>> input.replace(/[\.,:\[\]-]/g, ' ');
"Collawn "Annals of Plastic Surgery" Jan 1999 vol 42 pg 21 26"
>>> input.replace(/[\.,:\[\]-\"]/g, ' ');
SyntaxError: invalid range in character class { message="invalid range in character class", more...}

The problem is not the " but the - - if you want it to mean a literal dash, you need to put it at the start or the end of the character class:

input.replace(/[.,:\[\]"-]/g, ' ');

Otherwise A-Z means "any character from A to Z", and your regex contained the equivalent of Z-A which is an invalid range ([-" would be ASCII 91 to 34).

The problem here is that \]-\" describes a character range from ] (U+005D) to " (U+0022) that is an illegal range as start > end.

Escape the - too or put it at the start or end of the character class:

/[\.,:\[\]\-\"]/g

By the way, you only need to escape ], and \, and, depending on the position, also - and ^ inside a character class, so:

/[.,:[\]\-"]/g