How do I concatenate regular expressions in javascript?

Question

this is not what i am asking:

is there a way to add regex to another (in javascript language) ?

the reason for this is to make the code easier to maintain (e.g. if the included string is long or easier to maintain by a non-programmer).

in python, for example, I would write something like:

regstr1 = 'dogs|cats|mice'
regstr_container = '^animal: (cows|sheep|%s|zebra)$' % regstr1
re.compile(regstr_container)

however in javascript the regex is not a string.

re = /^animal: (rami|shmulik|dudu)$/;

or am I missing something?

+2

Berry tsakala 23 Aug 09 at 15:41

2 answers

var regstr1 = 'dogs|cats|mice',
regstr_container = '^animal: (cows|sheep|'+ regstr1 +'|zebra)$',
regex = RegExp(regstr_container);

+2

Eli gray 23 Aug 09 at 16:39

Cᴏʀʏ · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-23T15:44:04+0000

You don't need to use literal notation. Instead, you can create a new RegExp object.

var myRegex = new RegExp("^animal: (rami|shmulik|dudu)$");