\d only matchs 0-9 digits?

Question

As far as I know, \d should matchs non-english digits, e.g. ۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰ but it doesn't work properly in JavaScript.

See this jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/xZpam/

Is this a normal behavior?

Answer 1

It seems that JavaScript does not support this (along with other weaknesses of the language in RegExp). However there's a library called XRegExp that has a unicode addon, which enables unicode support through \p{} category definition. For example if you use \p{Nd} instead of \d it will match digits:

<script src="xregexp-all.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var englishDigits = '123123';
    var nonEnglishDigits = '۱۲۳۱۲۳';

    var digitsPattern = XRegExp('\\p{Nd}+');
    if (digitsPattern.test(nonEnglishDigits)) {
        alert('Non-english using xregexp');
    }

    if (digitsPattern.test(englishDigits)) {
        alert('English using xregexp');
    }
</script>

---

EDIT:

Used \p{Nd} instead of \p{N} as it seems that \d is equivalent to \p{Nd} in non ECMA Script Regex engines. Thanks go to Shervin for pointing it out. See also this fiddle by Shervin.

Answer 2

JavaScript does not support Unicode regex matching (and it is far from the only language where such is true).

http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html

Answer 3

In the documention of Mozilla Firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp) you will find that:

\d  

Matches a digit character in the basic Latin alphabet. Equivalent to [0-9].

Answer 4

\d is equivalent to [0-9], according to MDN.

Answer 5

From MDN . RegEx Test

Matches a digit character in the basic Latin alphabet. Equivalent to [0-9].

Answer 6

Matches a digit character. Equivalent to [0-9].

For example, /\d/ or /[0-9]/ matches '2' in "B2 is the suite number."

From MDN

Answer 7

Yes, it is normal and correct that \d matches the Ascii digits 0 to 9 only. The authoritative reference is the ECMAScript standard. It is not particularly easy reading, but clause 15.10.2.12 (CharacterClassEscape) specifies that \d denotes “the ten-element set of characters containing the characters 0 through 9 inclusive”.