I have a string in JavaScript like #box2 and I just want the 2 from it.
I tried:
var thestring = $(this).attr(\'href\');
var          
        You can do a function like this
function justNumbers(string) 
    {
        var numsStr = string.replace(/[^0-9]/g,'');
        return parseInt(numsStr);
    }
remember: if the number has a zero in front of it, the int wont have it
If someone need to preserve dots in extracted numbers:
var some = '65,87 EUR';
var number = some.replace(",",".").replace(/[^0-9&.]/g,'');
console.log(number); // returns 65.87
                                                                        You can use Underscore String Library as following
var common="#box"
var href="#box1"
_(href).strRight(common)
result will be : 1 
See  :https://github.com/epeli/underscore.string
DEMO: 
http://jsfiddle.net/abdennour/Vyqtt/  
HTML Code : 
<p>
    <a href="#box1" >img1</a>
    <a href="#box2" >img2</a>
    <a href="#box3" >img3</a>
    <a href="#box4" >img4</a>
</p>
<div style="font-size:30px"></div>
JS Code :
var comm="#box"
$('a').click(function(){
  $('div').html(_($(this).attr('href')).strRight(comm))})
if you have suffix as following :
href="box1az" 
You can use the next demo :
http://jsfiddle.net/abdennour/Vyqtt/1/
function retrieveNumber(all,prefix,suffix){
 var left=_(all).strRight(prefix);
 return _(left).strLeft(suffix);
}
                                                                        var elValue     = "-12,erer3  4,-990.234sdsd";
var isNegetive = false;
if(elValue.indexOf("-")==0) isNegetive=true;
elValue     = elValue.replace( /[^\d\.]*/g, '');
elValue     = isNaN(Number(elValue)) ? 0 : Number(elValue);
if(isNegetive) elValue = 0 - elValue;
alert(elValue); //-1234990.234
                                                                        You can use regular expression.
var txt="some text 2";
var numb = txt.match(/\d/g);
alert (numb);
That will alert 2.
You can extract numbers from a string using a regex expression:
let string = "xxfdx25y93.34xxd73";
let res = string.replace(/\D/g, "");
console.log(res); 
output: 25933473