Develop Reference

Why do I have to add double backslash on javascript regex?

When I use a tool like regexpal.com it let's me use regex as I am used to. So for example I want to check a text if there is a match for a word that is at least 3 letters long and ends with a white space so it will match 'now ', 'noww ' and so on.
On regexpal.com this regex works \w{3,}\s this matches both the words above.
But on javascript I have to add double backslashes before w and s. Like this:
var regexp = new RegExp('\\w{3,}\\s','i');
or else it does not work. I looked around for answers and searched for double backslash javascript regex but all I got was completely different topics about how to escape backslash and so on. Does someone have an explanation for this?

You could write the regex without double backslash but you need to put the regex inside forward slashshes as delimiter.
/^\w{3,}\s$/.test('foo ')
Anchors ^ (matches the start of the line boundary), $ (matches the end of a line) helps to do an exact string match. You don't need an i modifier since \w matches both upper and lower case letters.

Why? Because in a string, "\" quotes the following character so "\w" is seen as "w". It essentially says "treat the next character literally and don't interpret it".
To avoid that, the "\" must be quoted too, so "\\w" is seen by the regular expression parser as "\w".

Javascript Regular expression error in get string between two strings

I have string look like this :
"fdsgsgf.signature=xxxxx(bv)"
And i want to get xxxxx
With : var testRE = html.match(".signature=(.*)/\(");
And when i run it i get exception that it's not valid regex.
Any idea why?

Some issues with your code:
You're missing starting slash / of your regex
Instead of .* you should better use [^(]+
dot needs to be escaped
Modified code:
html.match(/\.signature=([^(]+)/);

You need to double escape the backslash: ".signature=(.*)/\\(". This is a valid regex, but it will match the / char though. If you don't need it, simply remove it ;)

Can it be done with regex?

Having the following regex: ([a-zA-Z0-9//._-]{3,12}[^//._-]) used like pattern="([a-zA-Z0-9/._-]{3,12}[^/._-])" to validate an HTML text input for username, I wonder if is there anyway of telling it to check that the string has only one of the following: ., -, _
By that I mean, that I'm in need of regex that would accomplish the following (if possible)
alex-how => Valid
alex-how. => Not valid, because finishing in .
alex.how => Valid
alex.how-ha => Not valid, contains already a .
alex-how_da => Not valid, contains already a -
The problem with my current regex, is that for some reason, accepts any character at the end of the string that is not ._-, and can't figure it out why.
The other problem, is that it doesn't check to see that it contains only of the allowed special characters.
Any ideas?

Try this one out:
^(?!(.*[.|_|-].*){2})(?!.*[.|_|-]$)[a-zA-Z0-9//._-]{3,12}$
Regexpal link. The regex above allow at max one of ., _ or -.

What you want is one or more strings containing all upper, lower and digit characters
followed by either one or none of the characters in "-", ".", or "_", followed by at least one character:
^[a-zA-Z0-9]+[-|_|\.]{0,1}[a-zA-Z0-9]+$

Hope this will work for you:-
It says starts with characters followed by (-,.,_) and followed and end with characters
^[\w\d]*[-_\.\w\d]*[\w\d]$

Seems to me you want:
^[A-Za-z0-9]+(?:[\._-][A-Za-z0-9]+)?$
Breaking it down:
^: beginning of line
[A-Za-z0-9]+: one or more alphanumeric characters
(?:[\._-][A-Za-z0-9]+)?: (optional, non-captured) one of your allowed special characters followed by one or more alphanumeric characters
$: end of line
It's unclear from your question if you wanted one of your special characters (., -, and _) to be optional or required (e.g., zero-or-one versus exactly-one). If you actually wanted to require one such special character, you would just get rid of the ? at the very end.
Here's a demonstration of this regular expression on your example inputs:
http://rubular.com/r/SQ4aKTIEF6
As for the length requirement (between 3 and 12 characters): This might be a cop-out, but personally I would argue that it would make more sense to validate this by just checking the length property directly in JavaScript, rather than over-complicating the regular expression.

^(?=[a-zA-Z0-9/._-]{3,12}$)[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:[/._-][a-zA-Z0-9]+)?$
or, as a JavaScript regex literal:
/^(?=[a-zA-Z0-9\/._-]{3,12})[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:[\/._-][a-zA-Z0-9]+)?$/
The lookahead, (?=[a-zA-Z0-9/._-]{3,12}$), does the overall-length validation.
Then [a-zA-Z0-9]+ ensures that the name starts with at least one non-separator character.
If there is a separator, (?:[/._-][a-zA-Z0-9]+)? ensures that there's at least one non-separator following it.
Note that / has no special meaning in a regex. You only have to escape it if you're using a regex literal (because / is the regex delimiter), and you escape it by prefixing with a backslash, not another forward-slash. And inside a character class, you don't need to escape the dot (.) to make it match a literal dot.

The dot in regex has a special meaning: "any character here".
If you mean a literal dot, you should escape it to tell the regex parser so.
Escape dot in a regex range

Regex not working as expected

Whats wrong with this regular expression?
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#-\('"]{1,7}$/;
when I enter the following valid input, it fails:
a&'-#"2
Also check for 2 consecutive spaces within the input.

The dash needs to be either escaped (\-) or placed at the end of the character class, or it will signify a range (as in A-Z), not a literal dash:
/^[A-Z\d\s&#('"-]{1,7}$/i
would be a better regex.
N. B: [#-\(] would have matched #, $, %, &, ' or (.
To address the added requirement of not allowing two consecutive spaces, use a lookahead assertion:
/^(?!.*\s{2})[A-Z\d\s&#('"-]{1,7}$/i
(?!.*\s{2}) means "Assert that it's impossible to match (from the current position) any string followed by two whitespace characters". One caveat: The dot doesn't match newline characters.

The - (hyphen) has a special meaning inside a character class, used for specifying ranges. Did you mean to escape it?:
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#\-\('"]{1,7}$/;
This RegExp matches your input.

You have an unescaped - in the middle of your character class. This means that you're actually searching for all characters between and including # and ( (which are #, $, %, &, ', and (). Either move it to the end or escape it with a backslash. Your regex should read:
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#\('"-]{1,7}$/
or
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#\-\('"]{1,7}$/

remove the ; at the end and
^[a-zA-Z\d\s\&\#\-\(\'\"]+$

Your input does not match the regular expression. The problem here is the hyphen in you regexp. If you move it from its position after the '#' character to the start of the regex, like so:
/^[-a-zA-Z\d\s&#\('"]{1,7}$/;
everything is fine and dandy.
You can always use Rubular for checking your regular expressions. I use it on a regular (no pun intended) basis.

Javascript regexp - only if first character is not an asterisk

I am using a javascript validator which will let me build custom validation based on regexp
From their website: regexp=^[A-Za-z]{1,20}$ allow up to 20 alphabetic characters.
This will return an error if the entered data in the input field is outside this scope.
What I need is the string that will trigger an error for the inputfield if the value has an asterix as the first character.
I can make it trigger the opposite (an error if the first character is NOT an asterix) with:
regexp=[\u002A]
Heeeeelp please :-D

How about:
^[^\*]
Which matches any input that does not start with an asterisk; judging from the example regex, any input which does not match the regex will be cause a validation error, so with the double negative you should get the behaviour you want :-)
Explanation of my regex:
The first ^ means "at the start of the string"
The [ ... ] construct is a character class, which matches a single character among the ones enclosed within the brackets
The ^ in the beginning of the character class means "negate the character class", i.e. match any character that's not one of the ones listed
The \* means a literal *; * has a special meaning in regular expressions, so I've escaped it with a backslash. As Rob has pointed out in the comments, it's not strictly necessary to escape (most) special characters within a character class

How about ^[^\*].+.
Broken down:
^ = start of string.
[^\*] = any one character not the '*'.
.+ = any other character at least once.

You can invert character class by using ^ after [
regexp=[^\u002A]