RegExp that match everything except letters

Question

I'm trying to write RegExp that match everyting except letters. So far, I've wrote something like this:

/[^a-zA-Z]+/

However, during tests, I've found that it works nicely when I write for example: 'qwe' or 'qqqqqweqwe123123' or something similar, BUT when I start String from number for example: '1qweqwe', it doesn't match.

What do I have to do yet to match everything except letters at any position of my input String?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Correct RegExp I found is:

/^[^a-zA-Z]*$/

Answer 1

What do I have to do yet to match everything except letters at any position of my input String?

You need to use regular expression flags to achieve this

try this

'1qwe2qwe'.match(new RegExp(/[^a-zA-Z]+/g))

it should return ["1", "2"]

the g flag at end of the regexp tells regexp engine to keep traversing the string after it has found one match. Without g flag it just abandons traversal upon finding first match. You can find the reference here

Answer 2

Your regular expression is not anchored, so it will yield true for partial matches. If the whole string should not contain letters:

if (/^[^a-zA-Z]+$/.test(str)) {
    // all characters are not alphabetical
}

Or rather, if all characters must be numeric (or empty string):

if (/^\d*$/.test(str)) {
    // all characters are digits
}