Make parseFloat convert variables with commas into numbers

Question

I'm trying to get parseFloat to convert a userInput (prompt) into a number.

For example:

var userInput = prompt("A number","5,000") 
function parse_float(number) {
    return parseFloat(number)
}

When userInput = 5,000, parse_Float(userInput) returns 5.

However, if the user was inputting a value to change something else (ie: make a bank deposit or withdrawl) Then I to work properly, parse.Float(userInput) needs to return 5000, not 5. If anyone could tell me how to do this it would help me so much. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Your answer is close, but not quite right.

replace doesn't change the original string; it creates a new one. So you need to create a variable to hold the new string, and call parseFloat on that.

Here's the fixed code:

function parseFloatIgnoreCommas(number) {
    var numberNoCommas = number.replace(/,/g, '');
    return parseFloat(numberNoCommas);
}

I also renamed the function to parseFloatIgnoreCommas, which better describes what it does.

Answer 2

I have put together info from the comments to form a basic answer:

The answer seems to simply be to set parse_float to run :

number.replace(/,/g, "")
return parseFloat(number)

The complete code would look like this:

var userInput = prompt("A number","523,000,321,312,321") 
function parse_float(number) {
    number.replace(/,/g, "")
return parseFloat(number)
}

returns: 523000321312321

Answer 3

This is the function I use to scrub my user inputted numbers from a form. It handles anything a user may put in with a number like $ or just accidentally hitting a key.

I copied the following out of an object:

cleanInput : function(userValue){
    //clean the user input and scrub out non numerals
    var cleanValue = parseFloat(userValue.replace(/[^0-9\.]+/g,""));    
    return cleanValue;
},

To make it non-object just change the first line to cleanInput(){....