Why is my javascript match returning null?

Question

Using the following text as my msg variable:

/private UserName:some message without leading whitespace
/private UserName: some message with leading whitespace

And the following javascript to parse it:

if(msg.indexOf('/private') == 0){
    msg = msg.substring(8,msg.length);
    var parts = msg.match(/\s+(.+?)\:\s*(.+?)/);

    alert("Name: " + parts[0]);
    alert("Message: " + parts[1]);
}

I would expect index 0 to contain UserName and index 1 to contain some message with ...

Anyone see what I'm missing?

Blender · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-13 02:40:31Z

3

Tweak your regex a little bit:

/^\/private\s+(.*?):\s*(.*?)$/

And simplify your code:

var regex = /^\/private\s+(.*?):\s*(.*?)$/;
var parts = regex.exec(msg);

if (parts){
    alert("Name: " + parts[1]);
    alert("Message: " + parts[2]);
}

parts[0] is the entire matched string. You want parts[1] and parts[2].

edited Dec 13, 2012 at 2:40

answered Dec 13, 2012 at 2:35

Blender

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1 Comment

Paul Over a year ago

that was it...I'm so used to working with PERL and PHP I forgot about that. Thanks!

smholloway · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-13 02:48:37Z

1

var msg = '/private UserName:some message without leading whitespace \
/private UserName: some message with leading whitespace';

if (msg.indexOf('/private') == 0) {
   msg = msg.substring(8,msg.length);
   var parts = msg.match(/\s+(.+?)\:\s*(.+?)/);

   console.log("Name: " + parts[0]);
   console.log("Message: " + parts[1]);
}

Prints out

  Name:  UserName:s
  Message: UserName

I would debug the value of your msg and parts variables. Also, check your regex on a site like http://regexpal.com/. It looks like your regex may be matching too much. Do you want it to end with the colon? If so, try something more like this

\s+(\S+?)\:

answered Dec 13, 2012 at 2:48

smholloway

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Comments

marctrem · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-13 02:58:34Z

0

What you want to do is to split and trim :)

something like :

parts = msg.split(" ",1)[1].split(":",1);

alert("Name: " + parts[0]);
alert("Message: " + $trim(parts[1]));

trim is a jquery function but you could do it with regex :)

edited Dec 13, 2012 at 2:58

answered Dec 13, 2012 at 2:36

marctrem

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