Remove Whitespace from Start and End: when "or" means "and"

JavaScript
1

I needed a hint to crack this challenge.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/javascript-algorithms-and-data-structures/regular-expressions/remove-whitespace-from-start-and-end

I was getting everything from before but not after until I added the g at the end. But then I was thinking: Why is this working at all? Doesn’t the | (pipe) mean “or” shouldn’t it take of from either the front OR the end?

Thanks for any insight.

2

You need to recall the string so it can remove the whitespaces

3

do you mean something like /a|b/?
the thing is that if you let it like that it will match or just the a or just the b
for example, if you have a word like barabba the regex like that will match only one letter. If you add the g it will match b, a, a, b, b, a
try using the match method and look at the resulting array - that is what the replace method will change

4

Exactly: /a | b/ means a or b. I thought if a matches it ignores b. So why does it return both a and b? Or does the g mean that it applies the a or b test to the whole string? I guess it must. Now I get it, arghh. Thx

BTW. What’s the trick to get monospace for excerpts when writing in this forum?