CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
lolalola
lolalola

Reputation: 3823

jquery RegExp is not working as I expect

what is wrong, as explained by an example:

form = 'some other [1][2] data ... data[Company][c_list][2][name_2] ... some other data';
form.replace(new RegExp('[c_list][2]', 'g'), '[c_list][1]');

get: data[Company][c_list][2][name[c_list][1]]

need: data[Company][c_list][1][name_2]

What is wrong with my code?

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 58

Answers (3)

Guffa
Guffa

Reputation: 700262

The characters [and ] are used to make a set, so [c_list] in the regular expression doesn't match the character sequence [c_list], it matches one character which is c, _, l, i, s or t.

Escape the characters [ and ] in the expression. As you are writing the pattern as a string, you need to use \\ to put \ in the pattern:

form.replace(new RegExp('\\[c_list\\]\\[2\\]', 'g'), '[c_list][1]');

You can also write the regular expression as a literal, then you use just \ to escape characters:

form.replace(/\[c_list\]\[2\]/g, '[c_list][1]');

Upvotes: 3

sp00m
sp00m

Reputation: 48817

Escape the brackets of your regexp.

Upvotes: 0

Peter Herdenborg
Peter Herdenborg

Reputation: 5962

In a regular expression [...] has a special meaning of defining a character class. I think you are looking for 

form.replace(new RegExp('\[c_list\]\[2\]', 'g'), '[c_list][1]');

where the brackets have been escaped.

Upvotes: 1

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