Javascript: text selection including special characters

Question

I'm using this javascript code to grab the word immediately preceding the caret:

sel = window.getSelection()
var selectedRange = sel.getRangeAt(0);
sel.collapseToStart();
sel.modify("move", "backward", "word");
sel.modify("extend", "forward", "word");

This gets the word, even without trailing whitespace (ex. "word") but omits special characters on the end of the word (ex. instead of "word:" gets just "word" ).

If I include the colon inside of a word, like "wo:rd", this gets all 5 characters.

I really need to get trailing special characters, though. How can I do this?

Answer 1

I got it, I apologize for the sloppiness of the example code but here it is: jsFiddle

var i = 0;

function getBeforeSelection() {
    var sel = window.getSelection(),
        selectedRange = sel.getRangeAt(0),
        sel2,
        res,
        finalValue,
        regexObj;

    sel.collapseToStart();
    sel.modify("move", "backward", "word");
    sel.modify("extend", "forward", "word");

    finalValue = sel.toString();

    regexObj = new RegExp(finalValue + '[^A-Za-z0-9\s\b]*');

    res = sel.focusNode.nodeValue.trim().match(regexObj);

    alert(res);

}

// added for sake of example, calls getBeforeSelection on double click 
// (when selection is made)
document.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
    i++;

    if (i > 1) {
        getBeforeSelection();
        i = 0;
    } 
});