CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexgruntjs
Andrea Schmuttermair
Andrea Schmuttermair

Reputation: 670

Grunt RegEx Syntax

I want to replace a string using grunt-string-replace. Unfortunately my RexEx is not working, even when matching perfectly in regex101?

This pattern shall match all CSS links: 

<link href=\"css\/[a-zA-Z\-]+\.css\"[a-zA-Z=\"\/ ]+>

<link href="css/normalize.css" >
<link href="css/normalize.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="css/components.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="css/style-sheet.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

https://regex101.com/r/aY9hY0/21

This is the replace part in my Gruntfile.js (and it works when using it without regex):

 'string-replace': {
        dist: {
            files: [{
                expand: true,
                cwd: '../src',
                src:  '**/*.html',
                dest: '../process/html'
            }],
            options: {
                saveUnchanged: true,
                replacements: [{
                    pattern:     '<link href=\"css\/[a-zA-Z\-]+\.css\"[a-zA-Z=\"\/ ]+>',
                    replacement: 'asdf'
                }]
            }
        }
    },

Maybe there is a special start/end/escape Pattern that is expected by Grunt?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 621

Answers (1)

IMSoP
IMSoP

Reputation: 97718

I searched online for "grunt string-replace", based on the section of the file you showed. This led me to the grunt-string-replace NPM page, which contains an example:

options: {
  replacements: [{
    pattern: /\/(asdf|qwer)\//ig,
    replacement: '"$1"'
  }, {
    pattern: ',',
    replacement: ';'
  }]
}

Note that this is not JSON, it is an actual JavaScript file (Gruntfile.js, not Gruntfile.json), so the regex is not a string containing the pattern to be matched, but a JavaScript regex literal. MDN is a great resource for learning JS, and the MDN page about regular expressions explains this literal syntax in detail.

In short, it needs to be enclosed in /whatever/ instead of 'whatever'.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions