JavaScript (also known as JScript or ECMAScript) has built-in support for regular expressions. If you use JavaScript to validate user input on a web page at the client side, using JavaScript’s regular expression support will greatly reduce the amount of code you need to write. RegexBuddy makes it very easy to use the RegExp object in your JavaScript source code and web pages.
RegexBuddy supports standards-compliant JavaScript as implemented by the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. It also supports JavaScript as implemented by Internet Explorer in standards mode and in quirks mode. RegexBuddy is aware of all the differences and incompatibilities. It can tell you if any of those may affect your regex when you compare your regular expression between these JavaScript flavors.
RegexBuddy also support Steven Levithan’s open source XRegExp library which extends the JavaScript regex syntax and fixes many cross-browser regex issues. Go to xregexp.com to download it. If you’re using this library, select XRegExp instead of JavaScript in RegexBuddy. RegexBuddy supports XRegExp versions 2 through 5.
If you’re not sure whether you should be using XRegExp you can compare your regular expression between XRegExp and plain JavaScript. RegexBuddy will tell you if your regex will be handled differently by XRegExp or not. Then you can decide whether XRegExp will be useful.
First, use RegexBuddy to define a regex or retrieve a regexp saved in a RegexBuddy library. Rely on RegexBuddy’s clear regex analysis, which is constantly updated as you build the pattern, rather than dealing with the cryptic regex syntax on your own. Detailed help on that syntax is always only a click away.
If you copied a regex written for another programming language, simply paste it into RegexBuddy, select the original language, and then convert the regex to JavaScript’s regex flavor. You can easily migrate between standard JavaScript regular expressions and XRegExp.
If you created a new regular expression, test and debug it in RegexBuddy before using it in your JavaScript source code. Test each regex in RegexBuddy’s safe sandbox without risking precious data. Quickly apply the regex to a wide variety of input and sample data, without having to produce that input through your script.
Finally, let RegexBuddy generate a source code snippet that you can copy and paste directly into whichever IDE or code editor you use. Just choose what you want to use the regex for, and a fully functional code snippet is ready. You can change the names of variables and parameters to suit your naming style or the current situation, which RegexBuddy automatically remembers. Code snippets can use JavaScript’s built-in functions or the XRegExp library.
Don’t bother trying to remember JavaScript’s specific regexp syntax. And don’t worry about properly escaping backslashes and other characters. Just tell RegexBuddy what you want to do, and you will get the proper JavaScript code straight away. Anything can be done: testing a string for a match, extracting search matches, validating input, search-and-replace, splitting a string, etc.