Let\'s say I have a string that is littered with soft hyphens (pretend that the hyphens in the text below are soft hyphens):
T-h-i-s- -i-s- -a- -t-e-s-t-.- <
Assuming that the character really is Unicode 00AD:
var result = text.replace(/\u00AD/g,'');
If you have many hyphens to kill, use a character class:
var result = text.replace(/[\u00AD\u002D\u2011]+/g,'');