regex url problem

Question

i'm using this regex

((?:https?://|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()<>]+|\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'\".,<>?«»“”‘’]))

to match urls (found here http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls it's the bottom one) and when i use match in actionscript 3 it returns the link and everything after it, so if I tried this 'hello http://www.apple.com world' it will return 'http://www.apple.com world' how do I JUST get the url and not the 'world' part.

slebetman · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-11 05:48:41Z

This works for me:

var match = "hello http://www.apple.com world".match(/\b((?:https?:\/\/|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}\/)(?:[^\s()<>]+|\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,<>?«»“”‘’]))/i)

as does this:

var match = "hello http://www.apple.com world".match(new RegExp(
    "\\b((?:https?://|www\\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)"+
    "(?:[^\\s()<>]+|\\(([^\\s()<>]+|(\\([^\s()<>]+\\)))*\\))+"+
    "(?:\\(([^\\s()<>]+|(\\([^\\s()<>]+\\)))*\\)|"+
    "[^\\s`!()\\[\\]{};:'\".,<>?«»“”‘’]))",

    "i" // case insensitive
));

Just remember the string quoting rules. If you quote your regexp with // like the first example then you need to backslash escape literal /. If you quote your regexp with "" then you need to backslash escape all " and \ because the backsalsh itself has meaning within strings.

Also, remember that the URL is caught in the first capture group which you can access with:

if (match) {
    url = match[1];
}

or if you supply the global flag g then the matches will be an array of all captured URLs.

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