Regex testing for special characters

Question

I'm trying to write a regex to test for certain special characters, but I think I am overcomplicating things. The characters I need to check for are: &<>'"

My current regex looks like such:

/&<>'"/

Another I was trying is:

/\\&\\<\\>\\'\\"/

Any tips for a beginner (in regards to regex)? Thanks!

Answer 1

You are looking for a character class :

/[&<>'"]/

In doing so, any of the characters in the square brackets will be matched.

The expression you were originally using, /&<>'"/ , wasn't working as expected because it matches the characters in that sequential order. In other words, it would match a full string such as &<>'" but not &< .

Answer 2

I'm assuming that you want to be able to match all of the characters you listed, at one time.

If so, you should be able to combine a character set with the g (global-matching) flag, for your regex.

Here's what it could look like:

/[<>&'"]/g

Answer 3

尝试/（\\＆| \\ <|> | \\'| \\“）/取决于您使用的正则表达式系统