jquery - javascript function to remove diacritics

Question

I'm searching for javascript function to replace French diacritics and came accross this code:

String.prototype.removeDiacritics = function() {
var diacritics = [
    [/[300-306]/g, 'A'],
    [/[340-346]/g, 'a'],
    [/[310-313]/g, 'E'],
    [/[350-353]/g, 'e'],
    [/[314-317]/g, 'I'],
    [/[354-357]/g, 'i'],
    [/[322-330]/g, 'O'],
    [/[362-370]/g, 'o'],
    [/[331-334]/g, 'U'],
    [/[371-374]/g, 'u'],
    [/[321]/g, 'N'],
    [/[361]/g, 'n'],
    [/[307]/g, 'C'],
    [/[347]/g, 'c'],
];
var s = this;
for (var i = 0; i < diacritics.length; i++) {
    s = s.replace(diacritics[i][0], diacritics[i][1]);
}
return s;

}

which works great but I'm wondering where to get those regular expression number from e.g: [/[300-306]/g, 'A'] ...

The reason i ask is because i've noticed that the replacing list is missing the ? character but I have no idea whats the regular expression to replace ? to y.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Those three digit numbers are in octal, so if you take the unicode value of ? and convert it to octal, which is 377, you will be able to add it to the list:

var diacritics = [
    // Your other values...
    [/[377]/g, 'y'], 
    // ...
];

Here is a good site to look up the octal values of characters:

octal values of characters