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How to get word, number, whitespace using Javascript regex

In this post we will see some example of regular expression using which we will find words, non-words, numbers, non-numbers, whitespaces and non-whitespace characters. We will use special characters from regular expression Character classes. These special characters start with the ‘\’ backward slash. There are many more than the ones that I have displayed.


Words(alphanumeric)

We will start with getting words(alphanumeric characters including ‘_’) using regular expression. Here we use small ‘w’.

const wordRegex = /\w/g;
const str = 'hello123_-?!';

str.match( wordRegex ); // Output ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '1', '2', '3', '_']

Non-Words(alphanumeric)

Non-words(non-alphanumeric characters excluding ‘_’) using regular expression. We will use capital ‘W’.

const nonWordRegex = /\W/g;
const str = 'hello123_-?!';

str.match( nonWordRegex ); // Output ['-', '?', '!']

Number

Get numbers using regular expression. Here we use small ‘d’.

const numberRegex = /\d/g;
const str = 'hello123_-?!';

str.match( numberRegex ); // Output ['1', '2', '3']

Non-Number

Get non-numbers using regular expression. Here we us capital ‘D’.

const nonNumberRegex = /\D/g;
const str = 'hello123_-?!';

str.match( nonNumberRegex ); // Output ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '_', '-', '?', '!']

Whitespace

Get whitespace characters using regular expression. Here we use small ‘s’.

const whiteSpaceRegex = /\s/g;
const str = 'foo bar';

str.match( whiteSpaceRegex ); // Output [' ']

Non-Whitespace

Get non-whitespace characters using regular expression. Here we use capital ‘S’.

const whiteSpaceRegex = /\s/g;
const str = 'foo bar';

str.match( whiteSpaceRegex ); // Output ['f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r']

Conclusion

Hope this helps on how using regular expression we can find words, non-words, numbers, non-numbers, whitespaces and non-whitespace characters. See you in my next post. Till then enjoy coding 🙂

Further reading

Javascript Regex

How to to validate phone format using regex

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