non-capture group still showing in match

Question

I know this topic has been thoroughly covered on StackOverflow, but I can't for the life of me get my regular expression to work. So without further repetitive ado ...

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This is what I have.

String: <p model='cat'></p>

Regex: .match(/(?:model=')(.*)(?:')/g)

This is what my expression returns: model='cat'

This is what I want: cat

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Why isn't my non capture group ignored? Is it that I don't understand what a non-capturing group does? Why isn't my Regex working?

Answer 1

The entire match will always be group 0, you need to access that specific group (group 1 in this case since the first group is non-capture), you can do it like this:

var str = "<p model='cat'></p>";  var regex = /(?:model=')(.*)(?:')/g  var match = regex.exec(str);  alert(match[1]); // cat

Fiddle

Also, I suppose you are probably wanting several matches within str, you could do that like this:

var str = "<p model='cat'></p><p model='dog'></p><p model='horse'></p>";  var regex = /(?:model=')([^']*)/g  var matches = [];  var match;  while (match = regex.exec(str)) {    matches.push(match[1]);  }  alert(matches); // cat,dog,horse

Fiddle