Javascript escaping the dot in regex

Question

I'm trying to validate email addresses in javascript, I tried this

/[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+\@[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+\.[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+/

but it matched the input "b@aaa", where the middle "a" letter should be a dot to match. and tried not to escape the dot like this:

/[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+\@[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+.[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+/

and it matched the input too.

Why reinvent the wheel? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/46155/validate-email-address-in-javascript — Black Sheep, May 02 '14 at 18:57
Because I wanted to know why, as I use regular expressions extensively for other inputs other than emails, thanks. — Megamind Saiko, May 02 '14 at 19:08

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 02 '14 at 18:56

1

I think you need 2 backslashes:

/[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+\@[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+\\.[A-Za-z0-9_\-]+/

answered May 02 '14 at 18:56

David Xu

Thanks, adding another backslash worked (although I don't know why :) ) – Megamind Saiko May 02 '14 at 19:08
1

Because regex is also a type of string and \ has special meaning in string, so you need 2 of them to actually create a \. – David Xu May 02 '14 at 19:09
but like this, other backslashes should be doubled too, ^[A-Za-z0-9_\\-]+\\@[A-Za-z0-9_\\-]+\\.[A-Za-z0-9_\\-]+" and if it worked without doubling, it worked as it doesn't need escaping (the @ sign) and the hyphen is the last item in the square brackets, right? – Megamind Saiko May 02 '14 at 19:30

1 Answers1