Javascript substrings multiline replace by RegExp

Question

I'm having some troubles with matching a regular expression in multi-line string.

<script>
var str="Welcome to Google!\n";
str = str + "We are proud to announce that Microsoft has \n";
str = str + "one of the worst Web Developers sites in the world.";

document.write(str.replace(/.*(microsoft).*/gmi, "$1"));
</script>

http://jsbin.com/osoli3/3/edit

As you may see on the link above, the output of the code looks like this:

Welcome to Google! Microsoft one of the worst Web Developers sites in the world.

Which means, that the replace() method goes line by line and if there's no match in that line, it returns just the whole line... Even if it has the "m" (multiline) modifier...

Guffa · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-26 11:07:19Z

2

The multiline option only changes how the codes ^ and $ work, not how the code . works.

Use a pattern where you match any character using a set like [\w\W] instead of ., as that only matches non-linebreak characters.

document.write(str.replace(/[\w\W]*(microsoft)[\w\W]*/gmi, "$1"));

answered Dec 26, 2010 at 11:07

Guffa

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