JavaScript String Manipulation

Question

I'm using Javascript to grab a variable passed through the URL:

function get_url_parameter( param ){
 param = param.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]");
 var r1 = "[\\?&]"+param+"=([^&#]*)";
 var r2 = new RegExp( r1 );
 var r3 = r2.exec( window.location.href );
 if( r3 == null )
 return "";
 else
 return r3[1];
 }

Once I have the parameter required

var highlightsearch = get_url_parameter('search');

I want to be able to delete all of the string after the ">".

e.g

The result currently looks like this:

highlightsearch = "Approved%20XXXXX%20XXXXX>YYYY%20YYYYYYY%20YYYY%20-%20YYYY%20YYYY";

After my string manipulation I want it to hopefully look like

highlightsearch = "Approved%20XXXXX%20XXXXX";

Any help would be great.

• Andy E: Shameless plug, but your URL param function isn't very efficient, it doesn't work with encoded params or decode the result. See stackoverflow.com/questions/901115/… for a more robust solution.
• darrenhamilton: Thanks Andy, learning a lot this evening!

Answer 1

The following will get you everything before the ">":

var highlightsearch = get_url_parameter('search');
// highlightsearch = "1234>asdf"
highlightsearch = highlightsearch.slice(0, highlightsearch.indexOf(">"));
// highlightsearch = "1234"

Answer 2

Regular expression to match ">" and everything after it: >.*

highlightsearch = highlightsearch.replace(/>.*/, '')

• darrenhamilton: Thanks folks. Working on it now.