I'm trying to detect an occurrence of a string within string. But the code below always returns "null". Obviously something went wrong, but since I'm a newbie, I can't spot it. I'm expecting that the code returns "true" instead of "null"
var searchStr = 'width';
var strRegExPattern = '/'+searchStr+'\b/';
"32:width: 900px;".match(new RegExp(strRegExPattern,'g'));
Please don't put '/' when you pass string in RegExp option
Following would be fine
var strRegExPattern = '\\b'+searchStr+'\\b';
"32:width: 900px;".match(new RegExp(strRegExPattern,'g'));
You're mixing up the two ways of creating regexes in JavaScript. If you use a regex literal, / is the regex delimiter, the g modifier immediately follows the closing delimiter, and \b is the escape sequence for a word boundary:
var regex = /width\b/g;
If you create it in the form of a string literal for the RegExp constructor, you leave off the regex delimiters, you pass modifiers in the form of a second string argument, and you have to double the backslashes in regex escape sequences:
var regex = new RegExp('width\\b', 'g');
The way you're doing it, the \b is being converted to a backspace character before it reaches the regex compiler; you have to escape the backslash to get it past JavaScript's string-literal escape-sequence processing. Or use a regex literal.
The right tool for this job is not regex, but String.indexOf:
var str = '32:width: 900px;',
search = 'width',
isInString = !(str.indexOf(search) == -1);
// isInString will be a boolean. true in this case
Documentation: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference/Objects/String/indexOf
Notice that '\\b' is a single slash in a string followed by the letter 'b', '\b' is the escape code \b, which doesn't exist, and collapses to 'b'.
Also consider escaping metacharacters in the string if you intend them to only match their literal values.
var string = 'width';
var quotemeta_string = string.replace(/[^$\[\]+*?.(){}\\|]/g, '\\$1'); // escape meta chars
var pattern = quotemeta_string + '\\b';
var re = new RegExp(pattern);
var bool_match = re.test(input); // just test whether matches
var list_matches = input.match(re); // get captured results
You can use back tick symbol to make your string dynamic "`".
var colName = 'Col1';
var result = strTest.match(`xxxxxxx${colName}`);
by injecting ${colName} in to the text, it can be editable dynamically.
I am building search and I am going to use javascript autocomplete with it. I am from Finland (finnish language) so I have to deal with some special characters like ä, ö and å
When user types text in to the search input field I try to match the text to data.
Here is simple example that is not working correctly if user types for example "ää". Same thing with "äl"
var title = "this is simple string with finnish word tämä on ääkköstesti älkää ihmetelkö";
// Does not work
var searchterm = "äl";
// does not work
//var searchterm = "ää";
// Works
//var searchterm = "wi";
if ( new RegExp("\\b"+searchterm, "gi").test(title) ) {
$("#result").html("Match: ("+searchterm+"): "+title);
} else {
$("#result").html("nothing found with term: "+searchterm);
}
http://jsfiddle.net/7TsxB/
So how can I get those ä,ö and å characters to work with javascript regex?
I think I should use unicode codes but how should I do that? Codes for those characters are:
[\u00C4,\u00E4,\u00C5,\u00E5,\u00D6,\u00F6]
=> äÄåÅöÖ
There appears to be a problem with Regex and the word boundary \b matching the beginning of a string with a starting character out of the normal 256 byte range.
Instead of using \b, try using (?:^|\\s)
var title = "this is simple string with finnish word tämä on ääkköstesti älkää ihmetelkö";
// Does not work
var searchterm = "äl";
// does not work
//var searchterm = "ää";
// Works
//var searchterm = "wi";
if ( new RegExp("(?:^|\\s)"+searchterm, "gi").test(title) ) {
$("#result").html("Match: ("+searchterm+"): "+title);
} else {
$("#result").html("nothing found with term: "+searchterm);
}
Breakdown:
(?: parenthesis () form a capture group in Regex. Parenthesis started with a question mark and colon ?: form a non-capturing group. They just group the terms together
^ the caret symbol matches the beginning of a string
| the bar is the "or" operator.
\s matches whitespace (appears as \\s in the string because we have to escape the backslash)
) closes the group
So instead of using \b, which matches word boundaries and doesn't work for unicode characters, we use a non-capturing group which matches the beginning of a string OR whitespace.
The \b character class in JavaScript RegEx is really only useful with simple ASCII encoding. \b is a shortcut code for the boundary between \w and \W sets or \w and the beginning or end of the string. These character sets only take into account ASCII "word" characters, where \w is equal to [a-zA-Z0-9_] and \W is the negation of that class.
This makes the RegEx character classes largely useless for dealing with any real language.
\s should work for what you want to do, provided that search terms are only delimited by whitespace.
this question is old, but I think I found a better solution for boundary in regular expressions with unicode letters.
Using XRegExp library you can implement a valid \b boundary expanding this
XRegExp('(?=^|$|[^\\p{L}])')
the result is a 4000+ char long, but it seems to work quite performing.
Some explanation: (?= ) is a zero-length lookahead that looks for a begin or end boundary or a non-letter unicode character. The most important think is the lookahead, because the \b doesn't capture anything: it is simply true or false.
\b is a shortcut for the transition between a letter and a non-letter character, or vice-versa.
Updating and improving on max_masseti's answer:
With the introduction of the /u modifier for RegExs in ES2018, you can now use \p{L} to represent any unicode letter, and \P{L} (notice the uppercase P) to represent anything but.
EDIT: Previous version was incomplete.
As such:
const text = 'A Fé, o Império, e as terras viciosas';
text.split(/(?<=\p{L})(?=\P{L})|(?<=\P{L})(?=\p{L})/);
// ['A', ' Fé', ',', ' o', ' Império', ',', ' e', ' as', ' terras', ' viciosas']
We're using a lookbehind (?<=...) to find a letter and a lookahead (?=...) to find a non-letter, or vice versa.
I would recommend you to use XRegExp when you have to work with a specific set of characters from Unicode, the author of this library mapped all kind of regional sets of characters making the work with different languages easier.
Despite the fact the issue seems to be 8 years old, I run into a similar problem (I had to match Cyrillic letters) not so far ago. I spend a whole day on this and could not find any appropriate answer here on StackOverflow. So, to avoid others making lots of effort, I'd like to share my solution.
Yes, \b word boundary works only with Latin letters (Word boundary: \b):
Word boundary \b doesn’t work for non-Latin alphabets
The word boundary test \b checks that there should be \w on the one side from the position and "not \w" – on the other side.
But \w means a Latin letter a-z (or a digit or an underscore), so the test doesn’t work for other characters, e.g. Cyrillic letters or hieroglyphs.
Yes, JavaScript RegExp implementation hardly supports UTF-8 encoding.
So, I tried implementing own word boundary feature with the support of non-Latin characters. To make word boundary work just with Cyrillic characters I created such regular expression:
new RegExp(`(?<![\u0400-\u04ff])${cyrillicSearchValue}(?![\u0400-\u04ff])`,'gi')
Where \u0400-\u04ff is a range of Cyrillic characters provided in the table of codes. It is not an ideal solution, however, it works properly in most cases.
To make it work in your case, you just have to pick up an appropriate range of codes from the list of Unicode characters.
To try out my example run the code snippet below.
function getMatchExpression(cyrillicSearchValue) {
return new RegExp(
`(?<![\u0400-\u04ff])${cyrillicSearchValue}(?![\u0400-\u04ff])`,
'gi',
);
}
const sentence = 'Будь-який текст кирилицею, де необхідно знайти слово з контексту';
console.log(sentence.match(getMatchExpression('текст')));
// expected output: ["текст"]
console.log(sentence.match(getMatchExpression('но')));
// expected output: null
I noticed something really weird with \b when using Unicode:
/\bo/.test("pop"); // false (obviously)
/\bä/.test("päp"); // true (what..?)
/\Bo/.test("pop"); // true
/\Bä/.test("päp"); // false (what..?)
It appears that meaning of \b and \B are reversed, but only when used with non-ASCII Unicode? There might be something deeper going on here, but I'm not sure what it is.
In any case, it seems that the word boundary is the issue, not the Unicode characters themselves. Perhaps you should just replace \b with (^|[\s\\/-_&]), as that seems to work correctly. (Make your list of symbols more comprehensive than mine, though.)
My idea is to search with codes representing the Finnish letters
new RegExp("\\b"+asciiOnly(searchterm), "gi").test(asciiOnly(title))
My original idea was to use plain encodeURI but the % sign seemed to interfere with the regexp.
http://jsfiddle.net/7TsxB/5/
I wrote a crude function using encodeURI to encode every character with code over 128 but removing its % and adding 'QQ' in the beginning. It is not the best marker but I couldn't get non alphanumeric to work.
What you are looking for is the Unicode word boundaries standard:
http://unicode.org/reports/tr29/tr29-9.html#Word_Boundaries
There is a JavaScript implementation here (unciodejs.wordbreak.js)
https://github.com/wikimedia/unicodejs
I had a similar problem, where I was trying to replace all of a particular unicode word with a different unicode word, and I cannot use lookbehind because it's not supported in the JS engine this code will be used in. I ultimately resolved it like this:
const needle = "КАРТОПЛЯ";
const replace = "БАРАБОЛЯ";
const regex = new RegExp(
String.raw`(^|[^\n\p{L}])`
+ needle
+ String.raw`(?=$|\P{L})`,
"gimu",
);
const result = (
'КАРТОПЛЯ сдффКАРТОПЛЯдадф КАРТОПЛЯ КАРТОПЛЯ КАРТОПЛЯ??? !!!КАРТОПЛЯ ;!;!КАРТОПЛЯ/#?#?'
+ '\n\nКАРТОПЛЯ КАРТОПЛЯ - - -КАРТОПЛЯ--'
)
.replace(regex, function (match, ...args) {
return args[0] + replace;
});
console.log(result)
output:
БАРАБОЛЯ сдффКАРТОПЛЯдадф БАРАБОЛЯ БАРАБОЛЯ БАРАБОЛЯ??? !!!БАРАБОЛЯ ;!;!БАРАБОЛЯ/#?#?
БАРАБОЛЯ БАРАБОЛЯ - - -БАРАБОЛЯ--
Breaking it apart
The first regex: (^|[^\n\p{L}])
^| = Start of the line or
[^\n\p{L}] = Any character which is not a letter or a newline
The second regex: (?=$|\P{L})
?= = Lookahead
$| = End of the line or
\P{L} = Any character which is not a letter
The first regex captures the group and is then used via args[0] to put it back into the string during replacement, thereby avoiding a lookbehind. The second regex utilized lookahead.
Note that the second one MUST be a lookahead because if we capture it then overlapping regex matches will not trigger (e.g. КАРТОПЛЯ КАРТОПЛЯ КАРТОПЛЯ would only match on the 1st and 3rd ones).
Trying to find text "myTest":
/(?<![\p{L}\p{N}_])myTest(?![\p{L}\p{N}_])/gu
Similar to NetBeans or Notepad++ form. Trying to find the expression without any letter or number or underscore (like \w characters of word boundary \b) in any unicode characters of letter and number before or after the expression.
I have had a similar problem, but I had to replace an array of terms. All solutions, which I have found did not worked, if two terms were in the text next to each other (because their boundaries overlaped). So I had to use a little modified approach:
var text = "Ještě. že; \"už\" à. Fürs, 'anlässlich' že že že.";
var terms = ["à","anlässlich","Fürs","už","Ještě", "že"];
var replaced = [];
var order = 0;
for (i = 0; i < terms.length; i++) {
terms[i] = "(^\|[ \n\r\t.,;'\"\+!?-])(" + terms[i] + ")([ \n\r\t.,;'\"\+!?-]+\|$)";
}
var re = new RegExp(terms.join("|"), "");
while (true) {
var replacedString = "";
text = text.replace(re, function replacer(match){
var beginning = match.match("^[ \n\r\t.,;'\"\+!?-]+");
if (beginning == null) beginning = "";
var ending = match.match("[ \n\r\t.,;'\"\+!?-]+$");
if (ending == null) ending = "";
replacedString = match.replace(beginning,"");
replacedString = replacedString.replace(ending,"");
replaced.push(replacedString);
return beginning+"{{"+order+"}}"+ending;
});
if (replacedString == "") break;
order += 1;
}
See the code in a fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/antoninslejska/bvbLpdos/1/
The regular expression is inspired by: http://breakthebit.org/post/3446894238/word-boundaries-in-javascripts-regular
I can't say, that I find the solution elegant...
The correct answer to the question is given by andrefs.
I will only rewrite it more clearly, after putting all required things together.
For ASCII text, you can use \b for matching a word boundary both at the start and the end of a pattern. When using Unicode text, you need to use 2 different patterns for doing the same:
Use (?<=^|\P{L}) for matching the start or a word boundary before the main pattern.
Use (?=\P{L}|$) for matching the end or a word boundary after the main pattern.
Additionally, use (?i) in the beginning of everything, to make all those matchings case-insensitive.
So the resulting answer is: (?i)(?<=^|\P{L})xxx(?=\P{L}|$), where xxx is your main pattern. This would be the equivalent of (?i)\bxxx\b for ASCII text.
For your code to work, you now need to do the following:
Assign to your variable "searchterm", the pattern or words you want to find.
Escape the variable's contents. For example, replace '\' with '\\' and also do the same for any reserved special character of regex, like '\^', '\$', '\/', etc. Check here for a question on how to do this.
Insert the variable's contents to the pattern above, in the place of "xxx", by simply using the string.replace() method.
bad but working:
var text = " аб аб АБ абвг ";
var ttt = "(аб)"
var p = "(^|$|[^A-Za-zА-Я-а-я0-9()])"; // add other word boundary symbols here
var exp = new RegExp(p+ttt+p,"gi");
text = text.replace(exp, "$1($2)$3").replace(exp, "$1($2)$3");
const t1 = performance.now();
console.log(text);
result (without qutes):
" (аб) (аб) (АБ) абвг "
I struggled hard on this. Working with French accented characters, and I managed to find this solution :
const myString = "MyString";
const regex = new RegExp(
"(?:[^À-ú]|^)\\b(" + myString + ")\\b(?:[^À-ú]|$)",
"ig"
);
What id does :
It keeps checking word-boundaries with \b before and after "MyString".
In addition to that, (?:[^À-ú]|^) and (?:[^À-ú]|$) will check if MyString is not surrounded by any accented characters
It will not work with cyrillic but it may be possible to find the range of cirillic charactes and edit [^À-ú] in consequence.
Warning, it captures only the group (MyString) but the total match contains previous and next characters
See example : https://regex101.com/r/5P0ZIe/1
Match examples :
MyString
match : "MyString"
group 1 : "MyString"
Lorem ipsum. MyString dolor sit amet
match : " MyString "
group 1 : "MyString"
(MyString)
match : "(MyString)"
group 1 : "MyString"
BetweenCharactersMyStringIsNotFound
match : Nothing
group 1 : Nothing
éMyStringé
match : Nothing
group 1 : Nothing
ùMyString
match : Nothing
group 1 : Nothing
MyStringÖ
match : Nothing
group 1 : Nothing
I have this string :
var str = '#this #is____#a test###__'
I want to replace all the character (#,_) by (#) , so the excepted output is :
'#this #is#a test#'
Note :
I did not knew How much sequence of (#) or (_) in the string
what I try :
I try to write :
var str = '#this #is__ __#a test###__'
str = str.replace(/[#_]/g,'#')
alert(str)
But the output was :
#this #is## ###a test#####
my try online
I try to use the (*) for sequence But did not work :
var str = '#this #is__ __#a test###__'
str = str.replace(/[#_]*/g,'#')
alert(str)
so How I can get my excepted output ?
A well written RegEx can handle your problem rather easily.
Quoting Mohit's answer to have a startpoint:
var str = '#this #is__ __#a test###__';
var formattedStr = str.replace(/[#_,]+/g, '#');
console.log( formattedStr );
Line 2:
Put in formattedStr the result of the replace method on str.
How does replace work? The first parameter is a string or a RegEx.
Note: RegExps in Javascripts are Objects of type RegExp, not strings. So writing
/yourRegex/
or
New RegExp('/yourRegex/')
is equivalent syntax.
Now let's discuss this particular RegEx itself.
The leading and trailing slashes are used to surround the pattern, and the g at the end means "globally" - do not stop after the first match.
The square parentheses describe a set of characters who can be supplied to match the pattern, while the + sign means "1 or more of this group".
Basically, ### will match, but also # or #####_# will, because _ and # belong to the same set.
A preferred behavior would be given by using (#|_)+
This means "# or _, then, once found one, keep looking forward for more or the chosen pattern".
So ___ would match, as well as #### would, but __## would be 2 distinct match groups (the former being __, the latter ##).
Another problem is not knowing wheter to replace the pattern found with a _ or a #.
Luckily, using parentheses allows us to use a thing called capturing groups. You basically can store any pattern you found in temporary variabiles, that can be used in the replace pattern.
Invoking them is easy, propend $ to the position of the matched (pattern).
/(foo)textnotgetting(bar)captured(baz)/ for example would fill the capturing groups "variables" this way:
$1 = foo
$2 = bar
$3 = baz
In our case, we want to replace 1+ characters with the first occurrence only, and the + sign is not included in the parentheses!
So we can simply
str.replace("/(#|_)+/g", "$1");
In order to make it work.
Have a nice day!
Your regex replaces single instance of any matched character with character that you specified i.e. #. You need to add modifier + to tell it that any number of consecutive matching characters (_,#) should be replaced instead of each character individually. + modifier means that 1 or more occurrences of specified pattern is matched in one go. You can read more about modifiers from this page:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp
var str = '#this #is__ __#a test###__';
var formattedStr = str.replace(/[#_,]+/g, '#');
console.log( formattedStr );
You should use the + to match one-or-more occurrences of the previous group.
var str = '#this #is__ __#a test###__'
str = str.replace(/[#_]+/g,'#')
alert(str)
I have some input coming in a web page which I will re display and submit elsewhere. The current issue is that I want to double up all single backslashes that are sandwiched inbetween non-backslash characters before submitting the input elsewhere.
Test string "domain\name\\nonSingle\\\WontBe\\\\Returned", I want to only get the first single backslash, between domain and name.
This string should get nothing "\\get\\\nothing\\\\"
My current pattern that I can get closest with is [\w][\\](?!\\) however this will get the "\n" from the 1st test string i have listed. I would like to use lookbehind for the regex however javascript does not have such a thing for the version I am using. Here is the site I have been testing my regexs on http://www.regexpal.com/
Currently I am inefficiently using this regex [\w][\\](?!\\) to extract out all single backslashes sandwiched between non-backslash characters and the character before them (which I don't want) and then replacing it with the same string plus a backslash at the end of it.
For example given domain\name\\bl\\\ah my current regex [\w][\\]\(?!\\) will return "n\". This results in my code having to do some additional processing rather than just using replace.
I don't care about any double, triple or quadruple backslashes present, they can be left alone.
For example given domain\name\\bl\\\ah my current regex [\w][\\]\(?!\\) will return "n\". This results in my code having to do some additional processing rather than just using replace.
It will do just using replace, since you can insert the matched substring with $&, see:
console.log(String.raw`domain\name\\bl\\\ah`.replace(/\w\\(?!\\)/g, "$&\\"))
Easiest method of matching escapes, is to match all escaped characters.
\\(.)
And then in the replacement, decide what to do with it based on what was captured.
var s = "domain\\name\\\\backslashesInDoubleBackslashesWontBeReturned";
console.log('input:', s);
var r = s.replace(/\\(.)/g, function (match, capture1) {
return capture1 === '\\' ? match : '$' + capture1;
});
console.log('result:', r);
The closest you can get to actually matching the unescaped backslashes is
((?:^|[^\\])(?:\\\\)*)\\(?!\\)
It will match an odd number of backslashes, and capture all but the last one into capture group 1.
var re = /((?:^|[^\\])(?:\\\\)*)\\(?!\\)/g;
var s = "domain\\name\\\\escapedBackslashes\\\\\\test";
var parts = s.split(re);
console.dir(parts);
var cleaned = [];
for (var i = 1; i < parts.length; i += 2)
{
cleaned.push(parts[i-1] + parts[i]);
}
cleaned.push(parts[parts.length - 1]);
console.dir(cleaned);
The even-numbered (counting from zero) items will be unmatched text. The odd-numbered items will be the captured text.
Each captured text should be considered part of the preceding text.
I'm looking to create a JS Regex that matches double spaces
([-!$%^&*()_+|~=`{}\[\]:";'<>?,.\w\/]\s\s[^\s])
The RegEx should match double spaces (not including the start or end of a line, when wrapped within quotes).
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
For example:
var x = 1,
Y = 2;
Would be fine where as
var x = 1;
would not (more than one space after the = sign.
Also if it was
console.log("I am some console output");
would be fine as it is within double quotes
This problem is a classic case of the technique explained in this question to "regex-match a pattern, excluding..."
We can solve it with a beautifully-simple regex:
(["']) \1|([ ]{2})
The left side of the alternation | matches complete ' ' and " ". We will ignore these matches. The right side matches and captures double spaces to Group 2, and we know they are the right ones because they were not matched by the expression on the left.
This program shows how to use the regex in JavaScript, where we will retrieve the Group 2 captures:
var the_captures = [];
var string = 'your_test_string'
var myregex = /(["']) \1|([ ]{2})/g;
var thematch = myregex.exec(string);
while (thematch != null) {
// add it to array of captures
the_captures.push(thematch[2]);
document.write(thematch[2],"<br />");
// match the next one
thematch = myregex.exec(string);
}
A Neat Variation for Perl and PCRE
In the original answer, I hadn't noticed that this was a JavaScript question (the tag was added later), so I had given this solution:
(["']) \1(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|[ ]{2}
Here, thanks to (*SKIP)(*FAIL) magic, we can directly match the spaces, without capture groups.
See demo.
Reference
How to match (or replace) a pattern except in situations s1, s2, s3...
Article about matching a pattern unless...
Simple solution:
/\s{2,}/
This matches all occurrences of one or more whitespace characters. If you need to match the entire line, but only if it contains two or more consecutive whitespace characters:
/^.*\s{2,}.*$/
If the whitespaces don't need to be consecutive:
/^(.*\s.*){2,}$/