Strip HTML pound sign from string to create number

Question

I am trying to create a script that adds two strings that are pulled from a database. The script pulls the data correctly, but the strings contain a pound sign (£) - so consequently the numbers won't add together as they're effectively text strings.

var subtotal = "£25";
var shipping = "£5";

var total = subtotal + shipping;

How can I strip the pound signs from the code so that the numbers will add up?

Answer 1

You could remove all characters except digits and dots from the string using the string replace method with a regular expression, then call parseFloat on the result to cast it to a number.

const toNumber = n => parseFloat(n.replace(/[^.0-9]/g, ''));
var subtotal = "£25";
var shipping = "£5";

var total = toNumber(subtotal) + toNumber(shipping);

console.log(total);