Passing a string with apostrophe to javascript function

I have a situation where I need to pass a string with an apostrophe in it to a javascript function. Thi开发者_运维问答s function then takes the string and uses it to find the element by id in the DOM. As an example, I need to call:

showElement('what's')

function showElement(element_id){
     document.getElementById(element_id).style.display = "block";
}

I tried escaping the apostrophe like showElement('what\'s') but that did not seem to work. Is this possible at all?

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Have a look at JavaScript Escape Characters

Try using a backslash \

Something like

showElement('what\'s') 

function showElement(element_id){ 
     document.getElementById(element_id).style.display = "block"; 
} 

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You have entirely different problem here. id attribute can't have ' symbols inside and you won't be able to search for such an id with getElementById. Escaping works though, just not in this case.

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showElement("what's")

Double quote around string with single quote inside.