Return to Answer

function doReplace(mystring)
{
 var utf = {
 a: ['á','à','ã','Á','À','Ã'],
 e: ['é','ê','É','È'],
 i: ['í','Í'],
 o: ['ó','õ','Ó','Õ'],
 u: ['ú','Ú'],
 c: ['ç','Ç']
 };
 for(var c in utf)
 {
 var charArray = utf[c];
 for (var j = 0; j < charArray.length; j++)
 {
 mystring= mystring.replace(new RegExp(charArray[j], "g"), c);
 }
 }
 return mystring;
}

Note that one big regex (maybe generated from utf) or walking the string char by char will be a lot faster than repetitive replaces.

function doReplace(mystring)
{
 var utf = {
 a: ['á','à','ã','Á','À','Ã'],
 e: ['é','ê','É','È'],
 i: ['í','Í'],
 o: ['ó','õ','Ó','Õ'],
 u: ['ú','Ú'],
 c: ['ç','Ç']
 };
 for(var c in utf)
 {
 var charArray = utf[c];
 for (var j = 0; j < charArray.length; j++)
 {
 mystring= mystring.replace(new RegExp(charArray[j], "g"), c);
 }
 }
 return mystring;
}

It's slow. The fastest solution if your browser compile regexes (like most new ones do) might be to use one regex per character :

var utf = {
 a: ['á','à','ã','Á','À','Ã'],
 e: ['é','ê','É','È'],
 i: ['í','Í'],
 o: ['ó','õ','Ó','Õ'],
 u: ['ú','Ú'],
 c: ['ç','Ç']
};
var utfRegexes = {};
// Sadly javascript isn't C# so something that could be done in two lines
// of LINQ need to be unrolled.
for(var c in utf)
{
 console.log("in " + c);
 var chars = "[";
 for (var j = 0; j < utf[c].length; j++)
 {
 chars += utf[c][j];
 }
 chars += "]";
 utfRegexes[c] = new RegExp(chars, "g");
}
function doReplaceRegex(mystring)
{ 
 for(var c in utfRegexes)
 {
 mystring = mystring.replace(utfRegexes[c], c); 
 }
 return mystring;
}

function doReplace(mystring)
{
 var utf = {
 a: ['á','à','ã','Á','À','Ã'],
 e: ['é','ê','É','È'],
 i: ['í','Í'],
 o: ['ó','õ','Ó','Õ'],
 u: ['ú','Ú'],
 c: ['ç','Ç']
 };

 for(var c in utf)
 {
 var charArray = utf[c];
 for (var j = 0; j < charArray.length; j++)
 {
 mystring= mystring.replace(charArray[j], c);
 }
 }
 return mystring;
}

function doReplace(mystring)
{
 var utf = {
 a: ['á','à','ã','Á','À','Ã'],
 e: ['é','ê','É','È'],
 i: ['í','Í'],
 o: ['ó','õ','Ó','Õ'],
 u: ['ú','Ú'],
 c: ['ç','Ç']
 };
 for(var c in utf)
 {
 var charArray = utf[c];
 for (var j = 0; j < charArray.length; j++)
 {
 mystring= mystring.replace(new RegExp(charArray[j], "g"), c);
 }
 }
 return mystring;
}

Note that one big regex (maybe generated from utf) or walking the string char by char will be a lot faster than repetitive replaces.