detect if string contains pattern

Question

How to detect if string contains pattern with JavaScript:

1. input="[Lorem]foo";
2. input="[ ]";
3. input="[ipsum]foo";
4. input="[dolor]foo1";
5. input="[sit  ]foo2";
6. input="[ amet]foo3";
7. input="amet]foo3";
...

Script should process input in this way:

1. string1='Lorem'; string2="foo";
2. do nothing;
3. string1='ipsum'; string2="foo";
4. string1='dolor'; string2="foo1";
5. do nothing;
6. do nothing;
7. do nothing;
...

This would be a part of script...

input  = "[asd]qwe";
input2 = "qwe";

processit(input);
processit(input2);

function processit(e){

   if(..???..){
      alert(string1);
      alert(string2);
   }
   else {
      return false;
   }

}

Thank you for your time.

EDIT: Solution must be cross-browser

IE7 +

Firefox 3.6+

Chrome 7+ ...

Kind of a hard to see what seems to be the problem! If you need info about Regular expression - MDN RegEx and a site dedicated to RegEx — Bakudan
– Bakudan, Commented Apr 8, 2012 at 2:34

dhinesh · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-01 06:59:34Z

4

+50

jsbin code

This regex should achieve the result: /\[([a-zA-Z0-9]+)\]([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/

edited May 1, 2012 at 6:59

answered May 1, 2012 at 5:53

dhinesh

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2 Comments

Alan Moore Over a year ago

Those [^\s] constructs shouldn't be there. You're already telling it to match alphanumerics and nothing else with [a-zA-Z0-9]+; there's no need to tell it not to match whitespace. Also, you're requiring the first string to be at least three characters long, and you're dropping the last character because the second [^\s] is outside the capturing group.

st-boost Over a year ago

\w will work in place of each [a-zA-Z0-9] - it is equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_]. Also, as you want to match only the whole string, the regex should start with ^ and end with $.

alex · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-08 02:42:40Z

1

You can take advantage of how split() works with capturing groups.

var pieces = str.split(/\[(\w+?)\]/);

You may get some empty string values. You can remove them with...

pieces.filter(function(piece) { return piece; });

jsFiddle.

edited Apr 8, 2012 at 2:42

answered Apr 8, 2012 at 2:37

alex

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4 Comments

enloz Over a year ago

It DOES NOT work in Internet Explorer. Webpage error details Message: Object doesn't support this property or method Any suggestions?

alex Over a year ago

@enloz You can shim split() to get it to work in IE.

Eric Wendelin Over a year ago

I would imagine that pieces.filter is the piece unsupported by IE.

Tim Down Over a year ago

@EricWendelin: filter is unsupported in IE <= 8. IE 9 does support it.

Tim Down · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-01 11:01:28Z

0

Your actual requirements are unclear, so I'm guessing. The following will allow only non-empty alphanumeric-plus-underscore-only strings inside and after the brackets, and tries to match the whole string rather than multiple occurrences in a longer string.

var input = "[Lorem]foo";
var string1, string2;
var result = /^\[(\w+)\](\w+)$/i.exec(input);
if (result) {
    string1 = result[1];
    string2 = result[2];
}
alert(string1 + ", " + string2);

answered May 1, 2012 at 11:01

Tim Down

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