assign matched values from jquery regex match to string variable

Question

I am doing it wrong. I know.

I want to assign the matched text that is the result of a regex to a string var.

basically the regex is supposed to pull out anything in between two colons

so blah:xx:blahdeeblah would result in xx

var matchedString= $(current).match('[^.:]+):(.*?):([^.:]+');
alert(matchedString);

I am looking to get this to put the xx in my matchedString variable.

I checked the jquery docs and they say that match should return an array. (string char array?)

When I run this nothing happens, No errors in the console but I tested the regex and it works outside of js. I am starting to think I am just doing the regex wrong or I am completely not getting how the match function works altogether

This looks like a syntax error - there is an unopened closing parenthesis in your regex as well as an unclosed opening parenthesis. Is your code displayed correctly? — Tim Pietzcker
– Tim Pietzcker, Commented Jun 23, 2010 at 12:31
The regex was wrong to begin with. [^.:]+:(.*?):[^.:]+ would have been correct. It was also even more wrong because my strings in reality were blah:blahblah:xx:blahdeeblah so it wouldn't have matched what I wanted. The split function did the trick. — branchgabriel
– branchgabriel, Commented Jun 23, 2010 at 13:38

Andy E · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-23 12:34:49Z

6

I checked the jquery docs and they say that match should return an array.

No such method exists for jQuery. match is a standard javascript method of a string. So using your example, this might be

var str = "blah:xx:blahdeeblah";
var matchedString = str.match(/([^.:]+):(.*?):([^.:]+)/);
alert(matchedString[2]);
// -> "xx"

However, you really don't need a regular expression for this. You can use another string method, split() to divide the string into an array of strings using a separator:

var str = "blah:xx:blahdeeblah";
var matchedString = str.split(":");  // split on the : character
alert(matchedString[1]);
// -> "xx"

answered Jun 23, 2010 at 12:34

Andy E

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1 Comment

branchgabriel Over a year ago

Even better. Thanks Andy! Now I fully understand split

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