JAVASCRIPT
Sanitize Input: Allow Only Alphanumeric, Spaces, and Basic Punctuation
Clean user input by removing all characters except alphanumeric ones, spaces, and common punctuation marks using a simple JavaScript regex replacement.
function sanitizeInput(inputString) {
// Allows letters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9), spaces, and these specific symbols: -_.!?,()
const sanitized = inputString.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s\-_\.!?,()]/g, '');
return sanitized;
}
// Example usage:
const unsafeInput = "Hello, world! This is a test with some $ymb0ls and <script>tags</script>.";
const safeInput = sanitizeInput(unsafeInput);
console.log(safeInput); // "Hello, world! This is a test with some ymb0ls and tags."
How it works: This JavaScript function `sanitizeInput` takes a string and removes unwanted characters, leaving only alphanumeric characters, spaces, and a predefined set of punctuation marks (`-_.!?,()`). The regular expression `/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s\-_\.!?,()]/g` matches any character that is NOT in the allowed set (`[^...]`). The `replace` method with the global flag `g` then replaces all such disallowed characters with an empty string, effectively removing them.