Efficiently replace all accented characters in a string?

Question

For a poor man\'s implementation of near-collation-correct sorting on the client side I need a JavaScript function that does efficient single character rep

Answer 1

I think this might work a little cleaner/better (though I haven't test it's performance):

String.prototype.stripAccents = function() {
    var translate_re = /[àáâãäçèéêëìíîïñòóôõöùúûüýÿÀÁÂÃÄÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜÝ]/g;
    var translate = 'aaaaaceeeeiiiinooooouuuuyyAAAAACEEEEIIIINOOOOOUUUUY';
    return (this.replace(translate_re, function(match){
        return translate.substr(translate_re.source.indexOf(match)-1, 1); })
    );
};

Or if you are still too worried about performance, let's get the best of both worlds:

String.prototype.stripAccents = function() {
    var in_chrs =  'àáâãäçèéêëìíîïñòóôõöùúûüýÿÀÁÂÃÄÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜÝ',
        out_chrs = 'aaaaaceeeeiiiinooooouuuuyyAAAAACEEEEIIIINOOOOOUUUUY', 
        transl = {};
    eval('var chars_rgx = /['+in_chrs+']/g');
    for(var i = 0; i < in_chrs.length; i++){ transl[in_chrs.charAt(i)] = out_chrs.charAt(i); }
    return this.replace(chars_rgx, function(match){
        return transl[match]; });
};

---

EDIT (by @Tomalak)

I appreciate the idea. However, there are several things wrong with the implementation, as outlined in the comment below.

Here is how I would implement it.

var stripAccents = (function () {
  var in_chrs   = 'àáâãäçèéêëìíîïñòóôõöùúûüýÿÀÁÂÃÄÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜÝ',
      out_chrs  = 'aaaaaceeeeiiiinooooouuuuyyAAAAACEEEEIIIINOOOOOUUUUY', 
      chars_rgx = new RegExp('[' + in_chrs + ']', 'g'),
      transl    = {}, i,
      lookup    = function (m) { return transl[m] || m; };

  for (i=0; i