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Replace matching elements in array using regular expressions: invalid character

var input = [paul, Paula, george];
var newReg = \paula?\i
for(var text in input) {
if (newReg.test(text) == true) {
input[input.indexOf(text)] = george
}
}
console.log(input)
I don't know what's wrong in my code. it should change paul and Paula to george but when I run it it says there's an illegal character

The backslash (\) is an escape character in Javascript (along with a lot of other C-like languages). This means that when Javascript encounters a backslash, it tries to escape the following character. For instance, \n is a newline character (rather than a backslash followed by the letter n).
So, thats what is causing your error, you need to replace \paula?\i with /paula?/i

You need to replace \ by / in your regexp pattern.
You should wrap the strings inside quotes "
You need to match correctly your array, val is just the index of the word, not the word himself.
var input = ["paul", "Paula", "george"];
var newReg = /paula?/i;
for (var val in input) {
if (newReg.test(input[val]) == true) {
input[input.indexOf(input[val])] = "george";
}
}
console.log(input);
JSFIDDLE

Use dynamic (variable) string as regex pattern in JavaScript

I want to add a (variable) tag to values with regex, the pattern works fine with PHP but I have troubles implementing it into JavaScript.
The pattern is (value is the variable):
/(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\/a>))\b(value)\b/is
I escaped the backslashes:
var str = $("#div").html();
var regex = "/(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\\/a>))\\b(" + value + ")\\b/is";
$("#div").html(str.replace(regex, "" + value + ""));
But this seem not to be right, I logged the pattern and its exactly what it should be.
Any ideas?

To create the regex from a string, you have to use JavaScript's RegExp object.
If you also want to match/replace more than one time, then you must add the g (global match) flag. Here's an example:
var stringToGoIntoTheRegex = "abc";
var regex = new RegExp("#" + stringToGoIntoTheRegex + "#", "g");
// at this point, the line above is the same as: var regex = /#abc#/g;
var input = "Hello this is #abc# some #abc# stuff.";
var output = input.replace(regex, "!!");
alert(output); // Hello this is !! some !! stuff.
JSFiddle demo here.
In the general case, escape the string before using as regex:
Not every string is a valid regex, though: there are some speciall characters, like ( or [. To work around this issue, simply escape the string before turning it into a regex. A utility function for that goes in the sample below:
function escapeRegExp(stringToGoIntoTheRegex) {
return stringToGoIntoTheRegex.replace(/[-\/\\^$*+?.()|[\]{}]/g, '\\$&');
}
var stringToGoIntoTheRegex = escapeRegExp("abc"); // this is the only change from above
var regex = new RegExp("#" + stringToGoIntoTheRegex + "#", "g");
// at this point, the line above is the same as: var regex = /#abc#/g;
var input = "Hello this is #abc# some #abc# stuff.";
var output = input.replace(regex, "!!");
alert(output); // Hello this is !! some !! stuff.
JSFiddle demo here.
Note: the regex in the question uses the s modifier, which didn't exist at the time of the question, but does exist -- a s (dotall) flag/modifier in JavaScript -- today.

If you are trying to use a variable value in the expression, you must use the RegExp "constructor".
var regex = "(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\/a>))\b(" + value + ")\b";
new RegExp(regex, "is")

I found I had to double slash the \b to get it working. For example to remove "1x" words from a string using a variable, I needed to use:
str = "1x";
var regex = new RegExp("\\b"+str+"\\b","g"); // same as inv.replace(/\b1x\b/g, "")
inv=inv.replace(regex, "");

You don't need the " to define a regular expression so just:
var regex = /(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\/a>))\b(value)\b/is; // this is valid syntax
If value is a variable and you want a dynamic regular expression then you can't use this notation; use the alternative notation.
String.replace also accepts strings as input, so you can do "fox".replace("fox", "bear");
Alternative:
var regex = new RegExp("/(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\/a>))\b(value)\b/", "is");
var regex = new RegExp("/(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\/a>))\b(" + value + ")\b/", "is");
var regex = new RegExp("/(?!(?:[^<]+>|[^>]+<\/a>))\b(.*?)\b/", "is");
Keep in mind that if value contains regular expressions characters like (, [ and ? you will need to escape them.

I found this thread useful - so I thought I would add the answer to my own problem.
I wanted to edit a database configuration file (datastax cassandra) from a node application in javascript and for one of the settings in the file I needed to match on a string and then replace the line following it.
This was my solution.
dse_cassandra_yaml='/etc/dse/cassandra/cassandra.yaml'
// a) find the searchString and grab all text on the following line to it
// b) replace all next line text with a newString supplied to function
// note - leaves searchString text untouched
function replaceStringNextLine(file, searchString, newString) {
fs.readFile(file, 'utf-8', function(err, data){
if (err) throw err;
// need to use double escape '\\' when putting regex in strings !
var re = "\\s+(\\-\\s(.*)?)(?:\\s|$)";
var myRegExp = new RegExp(searchString + re, "g");
var match = myRegExp.exec(data);
var replaceThis = match[1];
var writeString = data.replace(replaceThis, newString);
fs.writeFile(file, writeString, 'utf-8', function (err) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(file + ' updated');
});
});
}
searchString = "data_file_directories:"
newString = "- /mnt/cassandra/data"
replaceStringNextLine(dse_cassandra_yaml, searchString, newString );
After running, it will change the existing data directory setting to the new one:
config file before:
data_file_directories:
- /var/lib/cassandra/data
config file after:
data_file_directories:
- /mnt/cassandra/data

Much easier way: use template literals.
var variable = 'foo'
var expression = `.*${variable}.*`
var re = new RegExp(expression, 'g')
re.test('fdjklsffoodjkslfd') // true
re.test('fdjklsfdjkslfd') // false

Using string variable(s) content as part of a more complex composed regex expression (es6|ts)
This example will replace all urls using my-domain.com to my-other-domain (both are variables).
You can do dynamic regexs by combining string values and other regex expressions within a raw string template. Using String.raw will prevent javascript from escaping any character within your string values.
// Strings with some data
const domainStr = 'my-domain.com'
const newDomain = 'my-other-domain.com'
// Make sure your string is regex friendly
// This will replace dots for '\'.
const regexUrl = /\./gm;
const substr = `\\\.`;
const domain = domainStr.replace(regexUrl, substr);
// domain is a regex friendly string: 'my-domain\.com'
console.log('Regex expresion for domain', domain)
// HERE!!! You can 'assemble a complex regex using string pieces.
const re = new RegExp( String.raw `([\'|\"]https:\/\/)(${domain})(\S+[\'|\"])`, 'gm');
// now I'll use the regex expression groups to replace the domain
const domainSubst = `$1${newDomain}$3`;
// const page contains all the html text
const result = page.replace(re, domainSubst);
note: Don't forget to use regex101.com to create, test and export REGEX code.

var string = "Hi welcome to stack overflow"
var toSearch = "stack"
//case insensitive search
var result = string.search(new RegExp(toSearch, "i")) > 0 ? 'Matched' : 'notMatched'
https://jsfiddle.net/9f0mb6Lz/
Hope this helps

Trouble getting my regular expression to match

I am having some trouble with my regex in javascript.
I have the following code, that I think should match, but it doesn't.
var rgx = new RegExp("{\d+:(\d+)}");
if (rgx.test("{0:00000}") == true) {
alert("match");
}
else
{
alert("no match");
}
​I am unsure if I should use test() here. I really want to catch the group, in my regex but exec() seems to give me the same result.
So what am I doing wrong?

The problem is that you need to escape the \ character in your regex:
var rgx = new RegExp("{\\d+:(\\d+)}");
Alternatively, you can use the literal syntax:
var rgx = /{\d+:(\d+)}/;
To capture the results, you should also use the .match function as opposed to test or exec. It will return null if it doesn't match and an array of at least one element if it does match.

There are multiple issues with the regex:
var rgx = new RegExp("{\d+:(\d+)}");
First (first noted by syazdani), you must string-escape the backslashes:
var rgx = new RegExp("{\\d+:(\\d+)}");
or better yet use a regex literal:
var rgx = /{\d+:(\d+)}/
Second, { and } have a special meaning in regex and should be escaped:
var rgx = /\{\d+:(\d+)\}/
Third, as noted by Ian, you might want to ensure the entire string is matched:
var rgx = /^\{\d+:(\d+)\}$/
RegExp#test returns a boolean true/false whether the string matches.
RegExp#exec returns an array holding the match and all captured groups if the string is matched, or null if the string is not matched:
var matches = /\{\d+:(\d+)\}/.exec("{0:000000}");
if(matches){
console.log(matches[1]); //logs "000000"
}

JavaScript regular expression to match hyphenated words?

I'd like a JavaScript regular expression that can match a string either at the start of another string, or after a hyphen in the string.
For example, "milne" and "lee" and "lees" should all match "Lees-Milne".
This is my code so far:
var name = "Lees-Milne";
var text = "lee";
// I don't know what 'text' is ahead of time, so
// best to use RegExp constructor.
var re = RegExp("^" + text | "-" + text, "i");
alert(re.exec(name.toLowerCase()));
However, this returns null. What am I doing wrong?

You could also use:
var re = RegExp("(?:^|-)" + text, "i");
Don't forget to escape regex meta characters in text if it's not an expression it self.
JavaScript has no built in function for that, but you could use:
function quotemeta(str){
return str.replace(/[.+*?|\\^$(){}\[\]-]/g, '\\$&');
}

Regex Wildcard for Array Search

I have a json array that I currently search through by flipping a boolean flag:
for (var c=0; c<json.archives.length; c++) {
if ((json.archives[c].archive_num.toLowerCase().indexOf(query)>-1)){
inSearch = true;
} }
And I have been trying to create a wildcard regex search by using a special character '*' but I haven't been able to loop through the array with my wildcard.
So what I'm trying to accomplish is when query = '199*', replace the '*' with /[\w]/ and essentially search for 1990,1991,1992,1993,1994 + ... + 199a,199b, etc.
All my attempts turn literal and I end up searching '199/[\w]/'.
Any ideas on how to create a regex wildcard to search an array?
Thanks!

You should write something like this:
var query = '199*';
var queryPattern = query.replace(/\*/g, '\\w');
var queryRegex = new RegExp(queryPattern, 'i');
Next, to check each word:
if(json.archives[c].archive_num.match(queryRegex))
Notes:
Consider using ? instead of *, * usually stands for many letters, not one.
Note that we have to escape the backslash so it will create a valid string literal. The string '\w' is the same as the string w - the escape is ignored in this case.
You don't need delimiters (/.../) when creating a RegExp object from a string.
[\w] is the same as \w. Yeah, minor one.
You can avoid partial matching by using the pattern:
var queryPattern = '\\b' query.replace(/\*/g, '\\w') + '\\b';
Or, similarly:
var queryPattern = '^' query.replace(/\*/g, '\\w') + '$';

var qre = query.replace(/[^\w\s]/g, "\\$&") // escape special chars so they dont mess up the regex
.replace("\\*", "\\w"); // replace the now escaped * with '\w'
qre = new RegExp(qre, "i"); // create a regex object from the built string
if(json.archives[c].archive_num.match(qre)){
//...
}