I have a string |0|0|0|0
but it needs to be 0|0|0|0
How do I replace the first character (\'|\') with (\'\'
You can do exactly what you have :)
var string = "|0|0|0|0";
var newString = string.replace('|','');
alert(newString); // 0|0|0|0
You can see it working here, .replace() in javascript only replaces the first occurrence by default (without /g), so this works to your advantage :)
If you need to check if the first character is a pipe:
var string = "|0|0|0|0";
var newString = string.indexOf('|') == 0 ? string.substring(1) : string;
alert(newString); // 0|0|0|0
You can see the result here