accent insensitive regex

Question

My code:

jQuery.fn.extend({
 highlight: function(search){
  var regex = new RegExp(\'(<[^>]*>)|(\'+ search.replace(/[.+]i/,\"$0\") +\')\',\'ig\');

         


        

Answer 1

You need to come up with a table of alternative characters and dynamically generate a regex based on that. For example:

var alt = {
  'c': '[cCç]',
  'a': '[aAãÃá]',
  /* etc. */
};

highlight: function (search) {
  var pattern = '';
  for (var i = 0; i < search.length; i++) {
    var ch = search[i];
    if (alt.hasOwnProperty(ch))
      pattern += alt[ch];
    else
      pattern += ch;
  }

  ...
}

Then for search = 'cao' this will generate a pattern [cCç][aAãÃá]o.