How do I escape special characters in regular expressions with JavaScript?

Escaping Special Characters in Regular Expressions with JavaScript

When crafting regular expressions, the inclusion of certain special characters can lead to ambiguity. To prevent this confusion, escaping these characters is crucial.

How to Escape Special Characters:

To escape a special character, simply precede it with a backslash (). For instance, to match the literal character "[" in your regular expression, you would use "[".

Automating the Escape Process:

Crafting regular expressions with multiple special characters can be tedious. Fortunately, you can automate the escape process using the following function:

function escapeRegExp(text) {
  return text.replace(/[-[\]{}()*+?.,\^$|#\s]/g, '\$&');
}

Usage Example:

To escape all special characters in your regular expression, simply pass the expression as an argument to the escapeRegExp function, as shown below:

var regex = new RegExp(escapeRegExp("[Munees]waran"));

Updates and Standardization:

An initial proposal to standardize this functionality in ES2016 was rejected. However, a revised proposal is currently being developed. Until then, you must implement this functionality yourself.

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