Introduction
Regular expressions is a form of pattern matching that you can apply on textual content. Take for example the DOS wildcards ? and * which you can use when you're searching for a file.
Creating a Regular Expression
You construct a regular expression in one of two ways:
1) Using a regular expression literal, as follows:
Code: JavaScript
re = /ab+c/;
2) Calling the constructor function of the RegExp object, as follows:
Code: JavaScript
re = new RegExp("ab+c");
Flags
There are three flags that you may use on a RegExp. The multiline flag has bad support in older browsers, but the other two are supported in pretty much every browser that can handle RegExp. These flags can be used in any order or combination, and are an integral part of the RegExp.
Global Search
g =>The global search flag makes the RegExp search for a pattern throughout the string, creating an array of all occurrences it can find matching the given pattern.
Ignore Case
i => The ignore case flag makes a regular expression case insensitive. For international coders, note that this might not work on extended characters such as å, ü, ñ, æ.
Multiline Input
m => This flag makes the beginning of input (^) and end of input ($) codes also catch beginning and end of line respectively.
In almost all cases you can use either way to define a regular expression, and they will be handled in exactly the same way no matter how you declare them.
Writing a Regular Expression Pattern
A regular expression pattern is composed of simple characters, such as /abc/, or a combination of simple and special characters, such as /ab*c/ or /go4expert (\d+)\.\d*/. Parentheses are used as a memory device. The match made with this part of the pattern is remembered for later use.
RegExp Methods
Some are invoked as a method of a RegExp, whereas others are called as a String's method.
RegExp.exec(string)
If no match is found, the method returns null, which converts to a Boolean false, when used as a Boolean expression.
If at least one match is found, the method returns an array.
RegExp.test(string)
The test() method checks if a pattern exists within a string, and returns true if so, and false otherwise. This method doesn't affect the global RegExp object.
Example:
Code: JavaScript
var email = "pradeep@go4expert.com";
var regex = new RegExp("^[0-9a-z\\._]+@[0-9a-z]+\\..+$","i");
// can also be written as regex = /^[0-9a-z\._]+@[0-9a-z]+\..+$/i;
if (regex.test(email))
alert(email + " is a valid e-mail address!");
else
alert(email + " is an invalid e-mail address!");
This method is the same as exec(), but its object is a string, and its argument is a regular expression.
String.replace(RegExp)
The replace() replaces matches with the given string, and returns the edited string.
Example:
Code: JavaScript
str = "go4expert.com is cool".replace(/cool/,"too cool");
//str is 'go4expert.com is too cool
search() method is the same as test(), but its object is a string, and its argument is a regular expression.
String.split(RegExp)
The split() method scans a string (which is actually its object) for delimiters, and splits the string into a list of substrings, returning the resulting list in the form of an array.
Example:
Code: JavaScript
//We want to get keywords separated either by comma or space
keys = "PHP,Java Perl,Oracle,MySQL MSSQL".split(/[, ]/);
document.write(keys.join("|"));
// outputs PHP|Java|Perl|Oracle|MySQL|MSSQL
