Does anyone have a function to add escape characters to a plain text string so that it can be treated as verbatim in a regex in javascript?

Question

Does anyone have an existing, proven javascript method that will convert a plain text string to its equivalent regex string, with escapes ('\' added for all of the regex control characters?

bret · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-24T23:25:57.803

1

This is a very common overlooked problem. I hope this routine helps.

   /** add escapes for regexp special characters to turn plainText into a verbatim regexp string
    *
    * @param plainText plain text string that may contain characters that need to be escaped to become a regexp
    * @returns {string} modified string that will work within a regexp
    */
   regexpEscape: function (plainText) {
       //noinspection JSLint
       return plainText.replace(/([-()\[\]{}+?*.$\^|,:#<!\/\\])/g, '\\$1');
   },

edited Jan 24 '14 at 23:25

answered Jan 24 '14 at 21:23

bret

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That's exactly what I'm looking for; you are such a genius. I'll try it out and hopefully it will fill the bill. – user3233603 Jan 24 '14 at 21:25
1

you can shorten your pattern with: `text.replace(/(?=[()[{+?*.^$|\\])/g, '\\')` (note: all other characters don't need to be escaped) – Casimir et Hippolyte Jan 24 '14 at 21:30
You must add the delimiter to the class: `\/` – Casimir et Hippolyte Jan 24 '14 at 21:48
plainText.replace(/([-()\[\]{}+?*.$\^|,:#<!\/\\])/g, '\\$1') – user3233603 Jan 24 '14 at 22:36
edited as per comments. Thank you. – bret Jan 24 '14 at 23:27

Does anyone have a function to add escape characters to a plain text string so that it can be treated as verbatim in a regex in javascript?

1 Answers1