9.2 Quoting style (Eloquent JavaScript Solutions)

9-2 Eloquent Javascript Solutions.js

let text = "'I'm the cook,' he said, 'it's my job.'";
// ' at begining of string or
// ' after non-word character or
// ' before non-word character or
// ' at and of string
console.log(text.replace(/^'|(\W)'|'(\W)|'$\b/g, "$1\"$2"));
// → "I'm the cook," he said, "it's my job."

9.2 Quoting Style

Imagine you have written a story and used single quotation marks throughout to mark pieces of dialogue. Now you want to replace all the dialogue quotes with double quotes while keeping the single quotes used in contractions like aren’t.

Think of a pattern that distinguishes these two kinds of quote usage and craft a call to the replace method that does the proper replacement.

Hints

The most obvious solution is to only replace quotes with a non-word character on at least one side. Something like /\W'|'\W/. But you also have to take the start and end of the line into account.

In addition, you must ensure that the replacement also includes the characters that were matched by the \W pattern so that those are not dropped. This can be done by wrapping them in parentheses and including their groups in the replacement string ($1, $2). Groups that are not matched will be replaced by nothing.