CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
EOB
EOB

Reputation: 3085

Regex in JavaScript is not matching a string?

I have this JavaScript code:

var textareas = document.getElementsByTagName('textarea');
var content = textareas[0].value;
var reg = new RegExp(/^.*[[]#.+#[]].*$/mgi);
var res = content.match(reg); // always null

The content var contains a long multiline string that contains patterns like [#some text goes here#]. I tested the regex with some online testing tools and it works against the string. Using the regex in JavaScript fails though - any idea why?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 285

Answers (3)

Susam Pal
Susam Pal

Reputation: 34294

How about this?

var content = 'foo\nhead [#some text goes here#] tail\nbar';
var reg = new RegExp(/\[#.+#\]/mgi);
var res = content.match(reg);

On execution, res contains the string '[#some text goes here#]'.

Note that I have escaped [ and ]. If they are not escaped, anything enclosed within them forms a character class.

Upvotes: 4

pete
pete

Reputation: 25091

This should capture the text between hashes (e.g., "some text here"):

var reg = /[^\[]*\[#([^\#]+)#\]/gims

Upvotes: 0

Sophie Alpert
Sophie Alpert

Reputation: 143204

You used [[] to escape [, which is fine, but you can't use []] to escape ] because it the first ] ends the character class in the regex. This works fine:

/^.*\[#.+#\].*$/mgi

In the case that you only want the single block and not the entire line, use:

/\[#.+#\]/mgi

Upvotes: 1

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