Modifier: (?ims-ims:...)
Limited availability
This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.
Amodifier overridesflag settings in a specific part of a regular expression. It can be used to enable or disable flags that change the meanings of certain regex syntax elements. These flags arei
,m
, ands
.
Syntax
(?flags1:pattern)(?flags1-flags2:pattern)
Note:JavaScript only has the "bounded" modifier form, where the pattern is placed inside the modifier group. Most other languages that support modifiers have an "unbounded" form, where the modifier is applied until the end of the closest containing group.
Parameters
flags1
OptionalA string of flags to enable. Can contain any combination of
i
,m
, ands
.flags2
OptionalA string of flags to disable. Can contain any combination of
i
,m
, ands
, but must not contain any flags included inflags1
.pattern
A pattern consisting of anything you may use in a regex literal, including adisjunction.
Description
Some flags change the meanings of regex syntax elements:
- The
i
flag makes the regex case-insensitive by making allliteral characters andcharacter classes implicitly be lowercase. - The
m
flag changes the behavior ofinput boundary assertions^
and$
to match the start and end of each line, in addition to the start and end of the input string. - The
s
flag changes the behavior of thewildcard.
character to match any character, including line terminators.
Sometimes you may want these changes to only take effect in a specific part of a regex pattern. You can do so by wrapping that part in a modifier. For example:
/(?i:Hello) world/;
In this regex, thei
flag is only enabled for theHello
part of the pattern. Theworld
part is case-sensitive. Therefore, it matchesHello world
,hello world
, andHELLO world
, but notHELLO WORLD
. The following is equivalent, by enabling thei
flag globally, and then disabling it for theworld
part:
/Hello (?-i:world)/i;
Theflags1
andflags2
parameters can contain any combination ofi
,m
, ands
. However, the flags must all be unique betweenflags1
andflags2
—you cannot enable or disable a flag twice, or enable a flag and then immediately disable it.
Theflags1
andflags2
parameters are optional, but at least one must be non-empty.(?flags1-:pattern)
is a modifier that only enables flags (equivalent to(?flags1:pattern)
).(?-flags2:pattern)
is a modifier that only disables flags.(?:pattern)
is just anon-capturing group, and(?-:pattern)
is a syntax error.
Other flags don't make sense in a modifier and are thus syntax errors if included:
- The
g
andy
flags determine how multiple calls toexec()
behave and affect matching behavior of the whole regex. - The
d
flag enables additional information in theexec()
result and affects matching behavior of the whole regex. - The
u
andv
flags change the behavior of the regex engine in a way that's too complex to be locally modified. They also have global effects on the regex, such as how thelastIndex
is advanced.
Examples
Matching a multiline format only at the start of the string
The following regex defines a format for a multiline string. The first^
represents the start of the whole input string, by being inside a(?-m:)
modifier, while all other^
characters represent the start of a line:
const pattern = /(?-m:^)---\n^title:.*^slug:.*^---/ms;const input = `---title: "Modifier: (?ims-ims:...)"slug: Web/JavaScript/Reference/Regular_expressions/Modifier---`;pattern.test(input); // true// Extra line break at the start of stringconst input2 = `\n${input}`;pattern.test(input2); // false
Matching certain words case-insensitively
Imagine you are finding all variable declarations calledfoo
orbar
(because they are bad names). The word may appear in any case, but you know the keyword is always lowercase, so you can do this:
const pattern = /(?:var|let|const) (?i:foo|bar)\b/;pattern.test("let foo;"); // truepattern.test("const BAR = 1;"); // truepattern.test("Let foo be a number"); // false
Specifications
Specification |
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