Deleting DOM Strings

Internet Explorer 6 supports the deleteData() method. Operating on text nodes, it deletes a substring from the text node data. You can specify the offset of the substring and its length. Here is its syntax:

textObj.deleteData(offset, count);

where:

• offset is a long integer value indicating the offset of the substring, in characters, from the beginning of the string.
• count is a long integer value indicating the number of characters to delete, starting from the specified offset.

Let's create a text node at the document level. We put the following line in the header of this page:

txtObj = document.createTextNode
 ("Doc JavaScript BiWeekly Columns");

and then let's delete a substring that starts at offset 15 and of length 9. Click this button to get the answer in Netscape 6 or Internet Explorer 6 ("Doc JavaScript Columns"). Click in Internet Explorer 5.x and get an error message:

Here is the definition of this button:

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="Delete a Substring"
  onClick="javascript:handleClick()">
</FORM>

The event handler is defined as follows:

function handleClick() {
  txtObj.deleteData(15, 9);
  alert(txtObj.data);
}

Next: How to insert DOM strings