Converting user input string to regular expression

Question

I am designing a regular expression tester in HTML and JavaScript. The user will enter a regex, a string, and choose the function they want to test with (e.g. search, match,

Answer 1

Here is a one-liner: str.replace(/[|\\{}()[\]^$+*?.]/g, '\\$&')

I got it from the escape-string-regexp NPM module.

Trying it out:

escapeStringRegExp.matchOperatorsRe = /[|\\{}()[\]^$+*?.]/g;
function escapeStringRegExp(str) {
    return str.replace(escapeStringRegExp.matchOperatorsRe, '\\$&');
}

console.log(new RegExp(escapeStringRegExp('example.com')));
// => /example\.com/

Using tagged template literals with flags support:

function str2reg(flags = 'u') {
    return (...args) => new RegExp(escapeStringRegExp(evalTemplate(...args))
        , flags)
}

function evalTemplate(strings, ...values) {
    let i = 0
    return strings.reduce((str, string) => `${str}${string}${
        i < values.length ? values[i++] : ''}`, '')
}

console.log(str2reg()`example.com`)
// => /example\.com/u

Answer 2

This will work also when the string is invalid or does not contain flags etc:

function regExpFromString(q) {
  let flags = q.replace(/.*\/([gimuy]*)$/, '$1');
  if (flags === q) flags = '';
  let pattern = (flags ? q.replace(new RegExp('^/(.*?)/' + flags + '$'), '$1') : q);
  try { return new RegExp(pattern, flags); } catch (e) { return null; }
}

console.log(regExpFromString('\\bword\\b'));
console.log(regExpFromString('\/\\bword\\b\/gi'));
            

Answer 3

I suggest you also add separate checkboxes or a textfield for the special flags. That way it is clear that the user does not need to add any //'s. In the case of a replace, provide two textfields. This will make your life a lot easier.

Why? Because otherwise some users will add //'s while other will not. And some will make a syntax error. Then, after you stripped the //'s, you may end up with a syntactically valid regex that is nothing like what the user intended, leading to strange behaviour (from the user's perspective).

Answer 4

You can ask for flags using checkboxes then do something like this:

var userInput = formInput;
var flags = '';
if(formGlobalCheckboxChecked) flags += 'g';
if(formCaseICheckboxChecked) flags += 'i';
var reg = new RegExp(userInput, flags);

Answer 5

In my case the user input somethimes was sorrounded by delimiters and sometimes not. therefore I added another case..

var regParts = inputstring.match(/^\/(.*?)\/([gim]*)$/);
if (regParts) {
    // the parsed pattern had delimiters and modifiers. handle them. 
    var regexp = new RegExp(regParts[1], regParts[2]);
} else {
    // we got pattern string without delimiters
    var regexp = new RegExp(inputstring);
}

Answer 6

I use eval to solve this problem.

For example:

    function regex_exec() {

        // Important! Like @Samuel Faure mentioned, Eval on user input is a crazy security risk, so before use this method, please take care of the security risk. 
        var regex = $("#regex").val();

        // eval()
        var patt = eval(userInput);

        $("#result").val(patt.exec($("#textContent").val()));
    }