Regular expression literal
A regular expression literal is source-language syntax that directly represents a regular expression pattern, often with optional flags or modifiers.
The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Fourth Edition
A regexp literal is Ruby syntax that directly represents a regular expression between delimiters, optionally followed by modifiers.
- How it is used
- Creates Regexp objects inline for testing, locating, and extracting patterns from strings.
- How deep it goes
- Explains slash and percent delimiters, matching results, and modifiers, but defers exhaustive regular-expression syntax.
- Examples
- Uses /abc/, %r{} and %r(abc)i, multiline phone-number patterns, and collections-report extraction exercises.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Ruby to test strings, obtain match positions or MatchData, and format complex patterns with modifiers.
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Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja, Second Edition
JavaScript source syntax that specifies a regular-expression pattern between slash delimiters, optionally followed by flags.
- How it is used
- Specifies a regular-expression pattern known at development time for JavaScript matching.
- How deep it goes
- Defines slash delimiters and trailing flags, then tests recognition and basic matching; it does not offer an exhaustive regex tutorial.
- Examples
- Uses /test/, /test/g, /hello/, and patterns with character sets, groups, and backreferences in recognition and matching exercises.
- What you can do after
- Practice/perform identifying literals, recognizing flags, and predicting matches for basic patterns.
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Related concepts
- regular expressionproduces · A formal pattern notation that describes sets of strings and enables text to be matched, searched, extracted, or transformed.
- JavaScriptused by · JavaScript is a high-level, dynamically typed, multi-paradigm programming language standardized as ECMAScript and used for web and general-purpose programming.
- string literalcontrasts with · A string literal is source-code notation that directly represents a string value.
- code compilationuses · Code compilation is the translation of source code or another formal representation into an executable, intermediate, or lower-level representation.
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