converting RegExp to String then back to RegExp

Question

So I have a RegExp regex = /asd/

I am storing it as a as a key in my key-val store system.

So I say str = String(regex) which returns "/asd/".

Now I need to convert that string back to a RegExp.

So I try: RegExp(str) and I see /\/asd\//

this is not what I want. It is not the same as /asd/

Should I just remove the first and last characters from the string before converting it to regex? That would get me the desired result in this situation, but wouldn't necessarily work if the RegExp had modifiers like /i or /g

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

If you don't need to store the modifiers, you can use Regexp#source to get the string value, and then convert back using the RegExp constructor.

var regex = /abc/g;
var str = regex.source; // "abc"
var restoreRegex = new RegExp(str, "g");

---

If you do need to store the modifiers, use a regex to parse the regex:

var regex = /abc/g;
var str = regex.toString(); // "/abc/g"
var parts = /\/(.*)\/(.*)/.exec(str);
var restoredRegex = new RegExp(parts[1], parts[2]);

This will work even if the pattern has a / in it, because .* is greedy, and will advance to the last / in the string.

If performance is a concern, use normal string manipulation using String#lastIndexOf:

var regex = /abc/g;
var str = regex.toString(); // "/abc/g"
var lastSlash = str.lastIndexOf("/");
var restoredRegex = new RegExp(str.slice(1, lastSlash), str.slice(lastSlash + 1));

Answer 2

const regex = /asd/gi;

converting RegExp to String

const obj = {flags: regex.flags, source: regex.source};
const string = JSON.stringify(obj);

then back to RegExp

const obj2 = JSON.parse(string);
const regex2 = new RegExp(obj2.source, obj2.flags);

Requires ES6+.

Answer 3

You can use the following before storage of your regex literal:

(new RegExp(regex)).source

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp/source

Example:

regex = /asd/

string = (new RegExp(regex)).source
// string is now "asd"

regex = RegExp(string)
// regex has the original value /asd/