How can I parse a string with a comma thousand separator to a number?

Question

I have 2,299.00 as a string and I am trying to parse it to a number. I tried using parseFloat, which results in 2. I guess the comma is the problem

Answer 1

It's baffling that they included a toLocaleString but not a parse method. At least toLocaleString without arguments is well supported in IE6+.

For a i18n solution, I came up with this:

First detect the user's locale decimal separator:

var decimalSeparator = 1.1;
decimalSeparator = decimalSeparator.toLocaleString().substring(1, 2);

Then normalize the number if there's more than one decimal separator in the String:

var pattern = "([" + decimalSeparator + "])(?=.*\\1)";separator
var formatted = valor.replace(new RegExp(pattern, "g"), "");

Finally, remove anything that is not a number or a decimal separator:

formatted = formatted.replace(new RegExp("[^0-9" + decimalSeparator + "]", "g"), '');
return Number(formatted.replace(decimalSeparator, "."));