Code-Parsing Regular Expressions via Lighter.js

By  on  

Perfecting a regular expression can take a lot of time and testing but once achieved can be a absolutely golden. While looking through the source code of MooTools syntax highlighter Lighter.js I stumbled upon a few code-parsing regular expressions that you might be interested in.

The JavaScript

	// Matches a C style single-line comment.
	slashComments: /(?:^|[^\\])\/\/.*$/gm,
	
	// Matches a Perl style single-line comment.
	poundComments: /#.*$/gm,
	
	// Matches a C style multi-line comment.
	multiComments: /\/\*[\s\S]*?\*\//gm,
	
	// Matches a string enclosed by single quotes.
	aposStrings:   /'[^'\\]*(?:\\.[^'\\]*)*'/gm, 
	
	// Matches a string enclosed by double quotes.
	quotedStrings: /"[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*"/gm, 
	
	// Matches both.
	strings:       /'[^'\\]*(?:\\.[^'\\]*)*'|"[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*"/gm,
	
	// Matches a property: .property style.
	properties:    /\.([\w]+)\s*/gi,   
	
	// Matches a method call: .methodName() style.
	methodCalls:   /\.([\w]+)\s*\(/gm, 
	
	// Matches a function call: functionName() style.
	functionCalls: /\b([\w]+)\s*\(/gm,   
	
	// Matches any of the common brackets.
	brackets:      /\{|\}|\(|\)|\[|\]/g, 
	
	// Matches integers, decimals, hexadecimals.
	numbers:       /\b((?:(\d+)?\.)?[0-9]+|0x[0-9A-F]+)\b/gi 

Regular expressions can look heinous so I apologize to anyone whose brains imploded after looking at the above hieroglyphics text. Have useful regular expressions you use often? Share them!

Recent Features

  • By
    5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  Can you blame us though?  We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...

  • By
    Serving Fonts from CDN

    For maximum performance, we all know we must put our assets on CDN (another domain).  Along with those assets are custom web fonts.  Unfortunately custom web fonts via CDN (or any cross-domain font request) don't work in Firefox or Internet Explorer (correctly so, by spec) though...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Printing MooTools Accordion Items

    Sometimes we're presented with unforeseen problems when it comes to our JavaScript effects. In this case, I'm talking about printing jQuery and MooTools accordions. Each "closed" accordion content element has its height set to 0 which means it will be hidden when the...

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Dotter

    It's best practice to provide an indicator of some sort when performing an AJAX request or processing that takes place in the background. Since the dawn of AJAX, we've been using colorful spinners and imagery as indicators. While I enjoy those images, I am...

Discussion

  1. David: very interesting, could you provide examples for each expression? ty so much!

  2. That’s pretty neat

    I’ve always used http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/ to text my RegExp

  3. Well, im not a veteran programmer but i did a noobMatcher to test my regExp hehe

    http://vrs.host56.com/noobMatcher/

  4. Thanks for this Tutorial. Can u provide Demo for this.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!