Choose any symbol in javascript regex

Question

I have a string containing something like this

"... /\*start  anythingCanBeEnteredHere   end\*/  ..."

I need a regex that gets only the anythingCanBeEnteredHere part, which can be a collection of any number of symbols.

The problem is that I can't find any shortcut/flag that will choose any symbol

So far I use this regex

var regex = /start([^\~]*)end/; 
var templateCode = myString.match(regex);

[^\~] chooses any symbol except "~" (which is a hack) and works fine, but I really need all symbols.

I've also tried this [^] but it doesn't work right.

Answer 1

 /start(.*)end/

will match FOO in startFOOend and BARendBAZ in startBARendBAZend.

 /start(.*?)end/

will match FOO in startFOOend and BAR in startBARendBAZend.

The dot matches anything except a newline symbol (\n). If you want to capture newlines as well, replace dot with [\s\S]. Also, if you don't allow the match to be empty (as in startend), use + instead of *.

See http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html for more info.

Answer 2

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "symbol", if you mean anything, that's what the dot . will match

Are you trying to do this?

var regex = /start(.*)end/; 
var templateCode = myString.match(regex);

Answer 3

To match any character, you should not use the dot operator (.) because it does not match line breaks. To include line breaks, use .|[\r\n] (character or line break) or [\s\S] (space or non-space characters).

var regex = /start[\s\S]*end/;
var templateCode = myString.match(regex);