Thursday, December 22, 2011

JavaScript RegExp Object


What is RegExp?

A regular expression is an object that describes a pattern of characters.
When you search in a text, you can use a pattern to describe what you are searching for.
A simple pattern can be one single character.
A more complicated pattern can consist of more characters, and can be used for parsing, format checking, substitution and more.
Regular expressions are used to perform powerful pattern-matching and "search-and-replace" functions on text.

Syntax

var patt=new RegExp(pattern,modifiers);

or more simply:

var patt=/pattern/modifiers;
  • pattern specifies the pattern of an expression
  • modifiers specify if a search should be global, case-sensitive, etc.

RegExp Modifiers

Modifiers are used to perform case-insensitive and global searches.
The i modifier is used to perform case-insensitive matching.
The g modifier is used to perform a global match (find all matches rather than stopping after the first match).

test()

The test() method searches a string for a specified value, and returns true or false, depending on the result.
The following example searches a string for the character "e":

Example

var patt1=new RegExp("e");
document.write(patt1.test("The best things in life are free"));
Since there is an "e" in the string, the output of the code above will be:
true 
<html>
<body>

<script type="text/javascript">
var patt1=new RegExp("e");

document.write(patt1.test("The best things in life are free"));
</script>

</body>
</html>

exec()

The exec() method searches a string for a specified value, and returns the text of the found value. If no match is found, it returns null.
The following example searches a string for the character "e":

Example 1

var patt1=new RegExp("e");
document.write(patt1.exec("The best things in life are free"));
Since there is an "e" in the string, the output of the code above will be:
e

<html>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
var patt1=new RegExp("e");
document.write(patt1.exec("The best things in life are free"));
</script>
</body>
</html>


No comments:

Post a Comment