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javascript regex insert new element into expression

I am passing a URL to a block of code in which I need to insert a new element into the regex. Pretty sure the regex is valid and the code seems right but no matter what I can't seem to execute the match for regex!
//** Incoming url's
//** url e.g. api/223344
//** api/11aa/page/2017
//** Need to match to the following
//** dir/api/12ab/page/1999
//** Hence the need to add dir at the front
var url = req.url;
//** pass in: /^\/api\/([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+)(?:\/page\/([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+))?$/
var re = myregex.toString();
//** Insert dir into regex: /^dir\/api\/([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+)(?:\/page\/([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+))?$/
var regVar = re.substr(0, 2) + 'dir' + re.substr(2);
var matchedData = url.match(regVar);
matchedData === null ? console.log('NO') : console.log('Yay');
I hope I am just missing the obvious but can anyone see why I can't match and always returns NO?
Thanks

Let's break down your regex
^\/api\/ this matches the beginning of a string, and it looks to match exactly the string "/api"
([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+) this is a capturing group: this one specifically will capture anything inside those brackets, with the + indicating to capture 1 or more, so for example, this section will match abAB25-_ %
(?:\/page\/([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+)) this groups multiple tokens together as well, but does not create a capturing group like above (the ?: makes it non-captuing). You are first matching a string exactly like "/page/" followed by a group exactly like mentioned in the paragraph above (that matches a-z, A-Z, 0-9, etc.
?$ is at the end, and the ? means capture 0 or more of the precending group, and the $ matches the end of the string
This regex will match this string, for example: /api/abAB25-_ %/page/abAB25-_ %
You may be able to take advantage of capturing groups, however, and use something like this instead to get similar results: ^\/api\/([a-zA-Z0-9-_~ %]+)\/page\/\1?$. Here, we are using \1 to reference that first capturing group and match exactly the same tokens it is matching. EDIT: actually, this probably won't work, since the text after /api/ and the text after /page/ will most likely be different, carrying on...
Afterwards, you are are adding "dir" to the beginning of your search, so you can now match someting like this: dir/api/abAB25-_ %/page/abAB25-_ %
You have also now converted the regex to a string, so like Crayon Violent pointed out in their comment, this will break your expected funtionality. You can fix this by using .source on your regex: var matchedData = url.match(regVar.source); https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp/source
Now you can properly match a string like this: dir/api/11aa/page/2017 see this example: https://repl.it/Mj8h

As mentioned by Crayon Violent in the comments, it seems you're passing a String rather than a regular expression in the .match() function. maybe try the following:
url.match(new RegExp(regVar, "i"));
to convert the string to a regular expression. The "i" is for ignore case; don't know that's what you want. Learn more here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp

Regular expression to match a string which is NOT matched by a given regexp

I've been hoving around by some answers here, and I can't find a solution to my problem:
I have this regexp which matches everyting inside an HTML span tag, including contents:
<span\b[^>]*>(.*?)</span>
and I want to find a way to make a search in all the text, except for what is matched with that regexp.
For example, if my text is:
var text = "...for there is a class of <span class="highlight">guinea</span> pigs which..."
... then the regexp would match:
<span class="highlight">guinea</span>
and I want to be able to make a regexp such that if I search for "class", regexp will match "...for there is a class of..."
and will not match inside the tag, like in
"... class="highlight"..."
The word to be matched ("class") might be anywhere within the text. I've tried
(?!<span\b[^>]*>(.*?)</span>)class
but it keeps searching inside tags as well.
I want to find a solution using only regexp, not dealing with DOM nor JQuery. Thanks in advance :).

Although I wouldn't recommend this, I would do something like below
(class)(?:(?=.*<span\b[^>]*>))|(?:(?<=<\/span>).*)(class)
You can see this in action here
Rubular Link for this regex
You can capture your matches from the groups and work with them as needed. If you can, use a HTML parser and then find matches from the text element.

It's not pretty, but if I get you right, this should do what you wan't. It's done with a single RegEx but js can't (to my knowledge) extract the result without joining the results in a loop.
The RegEx: /(?:<span\b[^>]*>.*?<\/span>)|(.)/g
Example js code:
var str = '...for there is a class of <span class="highlight">guinea</span> pigs which...',
pattern = /(?:<span\b[^>]*>.*?<\/span>)|(.)/g,
match,
res = '';
match = pattern.exec(str)
while( match != null )
{
res += match[1];
match = pattern.exec(str)
}
document.writeln('Result:' + res);
In English: Do a non capturing test against your tag-expression or capture any character. Do this globally to get the entire string. The result is a capture group for each character in your string, except the tag. As pointed out, this is ugly - can result in a serious number of capture groups - but gets the job done.
If you need to send it in and retrieve the result in one call, I'd have to agree with previous contributors - It can't be done!

Extract specific chars from a string using a regex

I need to split an email address and take out the first character and the first character after the '#'
I can do this as follows:
'bar#foo'.split('#').map(function(a){ return a.charAt(0); }).join('')
--> bf
Now I was wondering if it can be done using a regex match, something like this
'bar#foo'.match(/^(\w).*?#(\w)/).join('')
--> bar#fbf
Not really what I want, but I'm sure I miss something here! Any suggestions ?

Why use a regex for this? just use indexOf to get the char at any given position:
var addr = 'foo#bar';
console.log(addr[0], addr[addr.indexOf('#')+1])
To ensure your code works on all browsers, you might want to use charAt instead of []:
console.log(addr.charAt(0), addr.charAt(addr.indexOf('#')+1));
Either way, It'll work just fine, and This is undeniably the fastest approach
If you are going to persist, and choose a regex, then you should realize that the match method returns an array containing 3 strings, in your case:
/^(\w).*?#(\w)/
["the whole match",//start of string + first char + .*?# + first string after #
"groupw 1 \w",//first char
"group 2 \w"//first char after #
]
So addr.match(/^(\w).*?#(\w)/).slice(1).join('') is probably what you want.

If I understand correctly, you are quite close. Just don't join everything returned by match because the first element is the entire matched string.
'bar#foo'.match(/^(\w).*?#(\w)/).splice(1).join('')
--> bf

Using regex:
matched="",
'abc#xyz'.replace(/(?:^|#)(\w)/g, function($0, $1) { matched += $1; return $0; });
console.log(matched);
// ax

The regex match function returns an array of all matches, where the first one is the 'full text' of the match, followed by every sub-group. In your case, it returns this:
bar#f
b
f
To get rid of the first item (the full match), use slice:
'bar#foo'.match(/^(\w).*?#(\w)/).slice(1).join('\r')

Use String.prototype.replace with regular expression:
'bar#foo'.replace(/^(\w).*#(\w).*$/, '$1$2'); // "bf"

Or using RegEx
^([a-zA-Z0-9])[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+\/=?^_`{|}~-]+#([a-zA-Z0-9-])[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(?:\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*$
Fiddle

Regex thinks I'm nesting, but I'm not

I wrote this regexp to capture the strings below.
\!\[(.*?)?\]
All the strings below should match and return an optional string that's inside the first set of square brackets.
![]
![caption]
![]()
![caption]()
![caption][]
The problem is that this string also matches and returns ][ because the regex thinks it's between the first [ and last ].
![][] // Should not match, but does and returns "]["
How do I fix this?

Just remove the ? outside (.*?), that is redundant.
var myArray = ["![abc]","![caption]", "![def]()", "![caption]()","![caption][]"];
myArray.forEach(function(current) {
console.log(/!\[(.*?)\]/.exec(current)[1]);
});
Output
abc
caption
def
caption
caption
Check how the RegEx works here

Use this regex:
\!\[([^\]]*)\]
It means that it expects a "last" ] but makes internal ones invalid.
This should solve your issue.

My preference is this if you want to ignore catching the things like this ![[]]
\!\[([^\[\]]*)\]

Replace all besides the Regex group?

I was given a task to do which requires a long time to do.
The image say it all :
This is what I have : (x100 times):
And I need to extract this value only
How can I capture the value ?
I have made it with this regex :
DbCommand.*?\("(.*?)"\);
As you can see it does work :
And after the replace function (replace to $1) I do get the pure value :
but the problem is that I need only the pure values and not the rest of the unmatched group :
Question : In other words :
How can I get the purified result like :
Eservices_Claims_Get_Pending_Claims_List
Eservices_Claims_Get_Pending_Claims_Step1
Here is my code at Online regexer
Is there any way of replacing "all besides the matched group" ?
p.s. I know there are other ways of doing it but I prefer a regex solution ( which will also help me to understand regex better)

Unfortunately, JavaScript doesn't understand lookbehind. If it did, you could change your regular expression to match .*? preceded (lookbehind) by DbCommand.*?\(" and followed (lookahead) by "\);.
With that solution denied, i believe the cleanest solution is to perform two matches:
// you probably want to build the regexps dynamically
var regexG = /DbCommand.*?\("(.*?)"\);/g;
var regex = /DbCommand.*?\("(.*?)"\);/;
var matches = str.match(regexG).map(function(item){ return item.match(regex)[1] });
console.log(matches);
// ["Eservices_Claims_Get_Pending_Claims_List", "Eservices_Claims_Get_Pending_Claims_Step1"]
DEMO: http://jsbin.com/aqaBobOP/2/edit

You should be able to do a global replace of:
public static DataTable.*?{.*?DbCommand.*?\("(.*?)"\);.*?}
All I've done is changed it to match the whole block including the function definition using a bunch of .*?s.
Note: Make sure your regex settings are such that the dot (.) matches all characters, including newlines.
In fact if you want to close up all whitespace, you can slap a \s* on the front and replace with $1\n:
\s*public static DataTable.*?{.*?DbCommand.*?\("(.*?)"\);.*?}
Using your test case: http://regexr.com?37ibi

You can use this (without the ignore case and multiline option, with a global search):
pattern: (?:[^D]+|\BD|D(?!bCommand ))+|DbCommand [^"]+"([^"]+)
replace: $1\n

Try simply replacing the whole document replacing using this expression:
^(?: |\t)*(?:(?!DbCommand).)*$
You will then only be left with the lines that begin with the string DbCommand
You can then remove the spaces in between by replacing:
\r?\n\s* with \n globally.
Here is an example of this working: http://regexr.com?37ic4