Using regex to retrieve browser name

Question

Having problems with RegExp in javascript. I'm trying to return just the version number and browser name ie "firefox 22.0" or "msie 8.0"

console.log(navigatorSaysWhat())

function navigatorSaysWhat()
{
  var rexp = new RegExp(/(firefox|msie|chrome|safari)\s(\d+)(\.)(\d+)/i);
  // works in ie but not in firefox
  var userA = navigator.userAgent
  var nav = userA.match(rexp);
  return nav
 }

The above expression doesn't quite work. I' m trying to match browser name and version number from the strings.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0;

Your title does not really reflect your problem. And on what language is it (since Regex-es differ a lot)? — Richard
– Richard, Commented Jul 23, 2013 at 8:50

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-24 10:13:55Z

5

Regular expressions are case-sensitive. Ignore case by adding (?i) or other means provided by the regular expression engine you are using.

(?i)(firefox|msie|chrome|safari)[/\s]([\d.]+)

Here's Python example.

>>> agents = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET4.0C'
>>> [[m.group(1), m.group(2)] for m in re.finditer(r'(?i)(firefox|msie|chrome|safari)[\/\s]([\d.]+)', agents)]
[['Firefox', '22.0'], ['MSIE', '8.0']]

In Javascript:

var agents = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET4.0C';
agents.match(/(firefox|msie|chrome|safari)[/\s]([\d.]+)/ig)
=> ["Firefox/22.0", "MSIE 8.0"]

edited Jul 24, 2013 at 10:13

answered Jul 23, 2013 at 8:48

falsetru

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2 Comments

Ghoul Fool Over a year ago

Sorry, I naïvely assumed that reg expressions were universal and therefore failed to mentioned that I was working in JavaScript.

falsetru Over a year ago

@GhoulFool, Added a Javascript version. Check it out.

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