Developer Resources

RegExp

Overview

A class that represents a regular expression.

Base Class

Object

Constructor

RegExp(pattern : String)

RegExp(pattern : String, flags : String)

Arguments

pattern

A string that contains a regular expression.

flags

A String that contains of the avalable flags "g", "i" and "m". "g" means that the search is global, "i" that the search is case-insensitive and "m" switches to multiline mode.

Methods

RegExp.exec

Searches a string for a pattern.

RegExp.test

Searches a string for a pattern.

RegExp.toString

Returns a string that represents the regular expression

Inherited Methods

Object.hasOwnProperty

Checks for the existence of an object property

Object.toLocaleString

Returns a string that represents the object.

Object.toString

Returns a string that represents the object.

Object.valueOf

Returns the 'primitive' value of the object.

Example

// sample string containing some numbers
var string = "First Number: 1234; Second Number: 5678";

// regular expression to match whole numbers
var regex = new RegExp("[0-9]+","mg");

// find each regular expression match in the string
var result;
while ((result = regex.exec(string)) != null)
{
    // if we have a match, do something
    alert(result[0]);
}

RegExp.exec

function RegExp.exec(text : String) : Array(String)

Arguments

text

The text to search with the regular expression.

Returns

Returns an Array containing the results of searching text for the regular expression. Returns null if no text match was found.

Description

Searches the text for the string that the regular expression represents and returns the results in an Array. Returns null if no text match was found.

RegExp.test

function RegExp.test(text : String) : Array(String)

Arguments

text

The text to search with the regular expression.

Returns

Returns true if the pattern matches, false otherwise.

Description

Calling the test() method determines if the regular expression matches the string specified in the text parameter. If so, the call returns true. It is identical to "RegExp.exec(text) != null"

RegExp.toString

function RegExp.toString() : String

Returns

Returns a string containing the regular expression.

Description

Returns a string that represents the regular expression.