Common regular expressions

Exact string match

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Add the string you want to match in-between the two anchors.

const regexp = /^abc$/;
// Where 'abc' is the exact string you want to match

Match empty string

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Do not add any characters in-between to match an empty string.

const regexp = /^$/;

Match whitespace sequences

• Use the \s meta-sequence to match any whitespace character, including spaces, tabs, newlines, etc.
• Use the + quantifier to match one or more occurrences of the previous character.
• Add the global flag (g) to match all occurrences of the pattern in the string.

const regexp = /\s+/g;

Match line breaks

• Depending on the environment, line breaks can be represented in different ways.
• Use the \r character to match carriage returns, the \n character to match newlines, and the \r\n sequence to match carriage returns followed by newlines.
• Add the global (g) and multiline (m) flags to match all occurrences of the pattern in the string.

const regexp = /\r|\n|\r\n/gm;

Match non-word characters

• Use negation (^) to match any character that is not a word character (\w) or a whitespace character (\s).
• Add the global flag (g) to match all occurrences of the pattern in the string.
• Add the ignore case flag (i) to match both uppercase and lowercase characters.

const regexp = /[^\w\s]/gi;

Match alphanumeric, dashes and hyphens

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Use the a-zA-Z0-9- pattern to match any alphanumeric character, dashes and hyphens.
• Use the + quantifier to match one or more occurrences of the previous character.
• Particularly useful when matching URL slugs.

const regexp = /^[a-zA-Z0-9-_]+$/;

Match letters and whitespaces

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Use the a-zA-Z\s pattern to match any letter and whitespace character.
• Use the + quantifier to match one or more occurrences of the previous pattern.

const regexp = /^[A-Za-z\s]+$/;

Pattern not included

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Use a negative lookahead (?!) to match any character that is not followed by the pattern you want to exclude.
• Add the global flag (g) to match all occurrences of the pattern in the string.
• To ensure more than one pattern is not included, use the | character to separate them.

const regexp = /^((?!(abc|bcd)).)*$/;
// Where 'abc' and 'bcd' are pattern you want to exclude

JavaScript Regular Expression tips

Learn how to level up your regular expressions game, with features such as backreferences, lookaheads and named groups.

Text inside brackets

• Use the \( and \) characters to match the opening and closing brackets, respectively.
• Use a capturing group between the two and exclude the closing parenthesis character.
• Use the + quantifier to match one or more characters, as needed.
• Add the global flag (g) to match all occurrences of the pattern in the string.
• Replace \( and \) with \[ and \] to match square brackets and with \{ and \} to match curly brackets.

const regexp = /\(([^)]+)\)/g;

Validate GUID/UUID

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Validate each segment of the GUID/UUID separately using numeric character ranges and quantifiers.

const regexp = /^(0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[\/\-](0?[1-9]|1[012])[\/\-]\d{4}$/;

Validate date format (DD/MM/YYYY)

• Use the ^ and $ anchors to match the start and end of the string, respectively.
• Validate each segment of the date separately using numeric character ranges and quantifiers.
• Alter the order of the segments and separators to match different formats.

const regexp = /^(0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[\/\-](0?[1-9]|1[012])[\/\-]\d{4}$/;

Chunk string into n-size chunks

• Use the .{1,n} quantifier to match any character between 1 and n times.
• Add the global flag (g) to match all occurrences of the pattern in the string.

const regexp = /.{1,2}/g;
// Where '2' is the number of characters per chunk