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RegExp Pattern

Regular expressions can be used to match simple or complex patterns in text. They use special syntax characters to match patterns like email addresses or HTML tags. Common regex tokens include quantifiers like {n} to match a pattern n times, character classes to match sets of characters, alternation to match either/or patterns, lookaheads to match following patterns without including them in the match, and backreferences to match previously captured groups. Escapes are used to remove special meaning from characters.

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Mo Meqled
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16 views

RegExp Pattern

Regular expressions can be used to match simple or complex patterns in text. They use special syntax characters to match patterns like email addresses or HTML tags. Common regex tokens include quantifiers like {n} to match a pattern n times, character classes to match sets of characters, alternation to match either/or patterns, lookaheads to match following patterns without including them in the match, and backreferences to match previously captured groups. Escapes are used to remove special meaning from characters.

Uploaded by

Mo Meqled
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Regular Expression pattern

The patterns used in RegExp can be very simple, or very complicated,


depending on what you're trying to accomplish. To match a simple string
like "Hello World!" is no harder than actually writing the string, but if you
want to match an e-mail address or html tag, you might end up with a
very complicated pattern that will use most of the syntax presented in the
table below.

Pattern Description
Escaping
\ Escapes special characters to literal and literal characters
to special.

E.g: /\(s\)/ matches '(s)' while /(\s)/ matches any


whitespace and captures the match.
Quantifiers
{n}, {n,}, Quantifiers match the preceding subpattern a certain
{n,m}, *, +, ? number of times. The subpattern can be a single character,
an escape sequence, a pattern enclosed by parentheses or
a character set.

{n} matches exactly n times.


{n,} matches n or more times.
{n,m} matches n to m times.
* is short for {0,}. Matches zero or more times.
+ is short for {1,}. Matches one or more times.
? is short for {0,1}. Matches zero or one time.

E.g: /o{1,3}/ matches 'oo' in "tooth" and 'o' in "nose".


Pattern delimiters
(pattern), Matches entire contained pattern.
Pattern Description
(?:pattern)
(pattern) captures match.
(?:pattern) doesn't capture match

E.g: /(d).\1/ matches and captures 'dad' in "abcdadef"


while /(?:.d){2}/ matches but doesn't capture 'cdad'.

Note: (?:pattern) is a JavaScript 1.5 feature.


Lookaheads
(?=pattern), A lookahead matches only if the preceding subexpression
(?!pattern) is followed by the pattern, but the pattern is not part of
the match. The subexpression is the part of the regular
expression which will be matched.

(?=pattern) matches only if there is a following pattern in


input.
(?!pattern) matches only if there is not a following pattern
in input.

E.g: /Win(?=98)/ matches 'Win' only if 'Win' is followed by


'98'.

Note: Lookahead is a JavaScript1.5 feature.


Alternation
| Alternation matches content on either side of the
alternation character.

E.g: /(a|b)a/ matches 'aa' in "dseaas" and 'ba' in "acbab".


Character sets
[characters], Matches any of the contained characters. A range of
[^characters] characters may be defined by using a hyphen.
Pattern Description

[characters] matches any of the contained characters.


[^characters] negates the character set and matches all
but the contained characters

E.g: /[abcd]/ matches any of the characters 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'
and may be abbreviated to /[a-d]/. Ranges must be in
ascending order, otherwise they will throw an error. (E.g:
/[d-a]/ will throw an error.)
/[^0-9]/ matches all characters but digits.

Note: Most special characters are automatically escaped to


their literal meaning in character sets.
Special characters
^, $, ., ? and Special characters are characters that match something
all the else than what they appear as.
highlighted
characters ^ matches beginning of input (or new line with m flag).
above in the $ matches end of input (or end of line with m flag).
table. . matches any character except a newline.
? directly following a quantifier makes the quantifier non-
greedy (makes it match minimum instead of maximum of
the interval defined).

E.g: /(.)*?/ matches nothing or '' in all strings.

Note: Non-greedy matches are not supported in older


browsers such as Netscape Navigator 4 or Microsoft
Internet Explorer 5.0.
Literal characters
All characters Mapped directly to the corresponding character.
Pattern Description
except those
with special E.g: /a/ matches 'a' in "Any ancestor".
meaning.
Backreferences
\n Backreferences are references to the same thing as a
previously captured match. n is a positive nonzero integer
telling the browser which captured match to reference to.

/(\S)\1(\1)+/g matches all occurrences of three equal non-


whitespace characters following each other.
/<(\S+).*>(.*)<\/\1>/ matches any tag.

E.g: /<(\S+).*>(.*)<\/\1>/ matches '<div


id="me">text</div>' in "text<div
id=\"me\">text</div>text".
Character Escapes
\f, \r, \n, \t, \f matches form-feed.
\v, \0, [\b], \s, \r matches carriage return.
\S, \w, \W, \n matches linefeed.
\d, \D, \b, \B, \t matches horizontal tab.
\cX, \xhh, \v matches vertical tab.
\uhhhh \0 matches NUL character.
[\b] matches backspace.
\s matches whitespace (short for
[\f\n\r\t\v\u00A0\u2028\u2029]).
\S matches anything but a whitespace (short for
[^\f\n\r\t\v\u00A0\u2028\u2029]).
\w matches any alphanumerical character (word
characters) including underscore (short for [a-zA-Z0-9_]).
\W matches any non-word characters (short for [^a-zA-Z0-
9_]).
Pattern Description
\d matches any digit (short for [0-9]).
\D matches any non-digit (short for [^0-9]).
\b matches a word boundary (the position between a word
and a space).
\B matches a non-word boundary (short for [^\b]).
\cX matches a control character. E.g: \cm matches control-
M.
\xhh matches the character with two characters of
hexadecimal code hh.
\uhhhh matches the Unicode character with four
characters of hexadecimal code hhhh.

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