1.

Regular Expression in JavaScript RegExp

2. Regular Expression 

• A regular expression is a certain way to describe a pattern of characters.

• Pattern-matching or keyword search.

• Regular expressions are frequently used to test whether or not a string entered in an
HTML form has a certain format.

• For example,

You want to test if a user entered a string that contains 3 consecutive digits.

• \d\d\d

3. Regular expression in JavaScript 

• JavaScript provides regular expression capabilities through instances of the built-in

• var regTest = new RegExp(pattern, modifiers);

• Pattern specifies the pattern of an expression

• Modifiers specify if a search should be global, case-sensitive

• The i modifier is used to perform case-insensitive matching

• The g modifier is used to perform a global match (find all matches rather than
stopping after the first match)

• match() is a method of a String instance returns true if its string matches the pattern;
otherwise, returns false.

4. macth() in JavaScript

• match() is a method of a String instance returns true if its string matches the pattern;
otherwise, returns false.

For example:

var word = “I am a FSU student”;

var re = /fsu/i;

if(word.match(re))

alert(“Yes”);

else alert(“No”);

5. test() 
 • test(argument) is a method of a Regular Expression instance returns true if the
argument contains the pattern; otherwise, returns false.

for example:

var phoneNum = “8502349 023”;

var regTest = new RegExp(“^\\d{10}$”);

if(regTest.test(phoneNum)){

alert(“Valid phone number”);

else{

alert(“Invalid phone number”);}

6.
Caret ^ and dollar sign $ 

• ^ indicates the beginning of a string

• $ indicates the end of a string

• For example:

• \d\d\d represents strings consisting of three consecutive digits. It could represents

• ^\d\d\d$ represents strings consisting of only three consecutive digits.

7. Regular expression literal 

• It is tiresome to write duplicate backslashes.

• varregTest = new RegExp(“^\\d\\d\\d$”);

• Alternative syntax for creating a RegExp instance is

• varregTest = /^\d\d\d$/;

• The expression on the right-hand side is known as regular expression literal. The
scripting engine automatically escaping any backslash characters contained in the
regular expression literal.

8. Special characters

 • The simplest form of regular expression is a character that is not one of the regular
expression special characters:

•^$\.*+?()[]{}|
 • A special character is escaped by preceding it with a backslash. For example, \$$
represents the set of strings that end with a dollar sign.

• A . means a character except for a line terminator, such as \n and tab.

• * is called Kleene star, represents infinitely large sets.

9. Escape Code 

• A escape code regular expression represents multiple characters

• A list of escape code • \d – digits : 0 through 9

• \D – any character except those matched by \d

• \s – space: any JavaScript white space or line terminator ( space, tab, line feed, etc)

• \S – any character except those matched by \s

• \w – “word” character: any letter (a through z and A through Z), digit , or underscore

• \W – any character except those matched by \W

10. White space in regular expression 

• A white space is significant within a regular expression

• For example,

we have a regular expression, such as ^\d\. \w$ • Does “3.A” match this regular
expression?

• Does “9. B” match this regular expression?

11. Concatenation Operator 

• Simple regular expressions can be composed into more complex regular expressions
using concatenation operator.

• For instance: ^\d \s$ is a concatenated regular expression

• When you want to concatenate a regular expression with itself multiple times, you
can use the quantifier shorthand notation.

• \d{3} == \d\d\d

12. Union Operator 

• Union operator is represented by the pipe symbol |

• For example, \d|\s represents the set consisting of all digit and white space
characters.
 • Concatenation operator takes precedence over union, so \+|-\d|\s consists of +, the
two-character strings beginning with – followed by a digit, and the white space
characters.

13. Character class 

• It is tedious to use the union operator to represent a set of all lowercase letters.

• JavaScript provides a character class that can be used for such purpose.

• [a-z] • [A-Z] • [0-9]

• How to represent \w using character class?

14. Examples of regular expression 

• What does \d{3,6} represents?

• How about (\+|-){0,1}\d?

• How about \d*?

Regular Expression Pattern

/^\w+([\.-]?\w+)*@\w+([\.-]?\w+)*(\.\w{2,3})+$/

Character Description

/ .. / All regular expressions start and end with forward slashes.

^ Matches the beginning of the string or line.

\w+ Matches one or more word characters including the underscore. Equivalent to [A-Za-z0-9_].

[\.-] \ Indicates that the next character is special and not to be interpreted literally.
.- matches character . or -.

? Matches the previous character 0 or 1 time. Here previous character is [.-].

\w+ Matches 1 or more word characters including the underscore. Equivalent to [A-Za-z0-9_].

* Matches the previous character 0 or more times.

\w+ The sub-expression \w+([.-]?\w+)* is used to match the username in the email. It begins
([.-]?\w+)* with at least one or more word characters including the underscore, equivalent to [A-Za-z0-
9_]. , followed by . or - and . or - must follow by a word character (A-Za-z0-9_).

@ It matches only @ character.

\w+ It matches the domain name with the same pattern of user name described above..
([.-]?\w+)*

\.\w{2,3} It matches a . followed by two or three word characters, e.g., .edu, .org, .com, .uk, .us, .co
etc.

+ The + sign specifies that the above sub-expression shall occur one or more times, e.g., .com,
.co.us, .edu.uk etc.

$ Matches the end of the string or line.