Trouble with JavaScript Regular Expression

Question

I am having a tricky time getting this regular expression to work. The pattern I have so far is:

var dollarPattern = /^\d{1,}|\s\d/gi;

var matchedResults = new Array();
matchedResults = textValue.match(dollarPattern);

What I am hoping to achieve is using the example string "2 to 2.99 (63 items)", I want to check if it either starts with a digit, or if it contains a blankspace followed by a digit (in this case, both conditions are true). However, I keep getting a "matchedResults is null" error in Firefox (although it should have a length of 2).

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? Thanks...

{1,} is equivalent to +. That makes it a bit shorter and more readable. — stema
– stema, Commented May 12, 2011 at 7:08

Praveen Lobo · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-12 07:44:16Z

2

All you need is escaping.

// Please note that this works, but @Lekensteyn pointed out that this uses string literals
// Also, this will give you the first match(if exists) only.
alert("2 to 3.99 (63 items)".match("^\\d\|\\s\\d"));

OR

// This one will give you all possible matches
alert("2 to 3.99 (63 items)".match(/^\d|\s\d/g));

edited May 12, 2011 at 7:44

answered May 12, 2011 at 7:03

Praveen Lobo

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2 Comments

Lekensteyn Over a year ago

Do you understand RE's? There is no need to use string literals instead of regular expression literals.

Praveen Lobo Over a year ago

@Lekensteyn Nope, not a 100%. I posted the answer because it worked. There is no "need" but that doesn't mean that it can't be used and it won't work if used, right? After your comment, I did search for Javascript RE basics and I have modified the answer. Anyway, thanks for my very first downvote. :-)

Ryan Olds · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-12 07:07:51Z

0

Works fine in Chrome, FF4, and IE8.

I get null when I puts quotes around the regex.

However, the output I get it "2, 2".

answered May 12, 2011 at 7:07

Ryan Olds

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