XRegExp 1.0

After stalling for nearly a year, I've finally released XRegExp 1.0, the next generation of my JavaScript regular expression library. Although it doesn't add support for lookbehind (as I've previously suggested) due to what would amount to significant inherent limitations, it fixes a couple bugs, corrects even more cross-browser regex inconsistencies, and adds a suite of new regular expression functions and methods that make writing regex-intensive JavaScript applications easier than ever. One of these new functions, XRegExp.addToken, fundamentally changes XRegExp's implementation and allows you to easily create your own XRegExp plugins.

Here's XRegExp's abbreviated feature list from the brand new xregexp.com (which includes extensive documentation and code examples):

The full list of changes can be seen in the changelog. Please let me know if you find any bugs or have any suggestions for the library. I'd also love to hear about projects or sites that are using XRegExp (I've got a few listed on the XRegExp homepage now).

Regular Expressions Cookbook is Out

As of today, Regular Expressions Cookbook (written by Jan Goyvaerts and me, and published by O'Reilly Media) is listed as In Stock on Amazon.com and other fine bookstores. The book covers seven regular expression flavors (.NET, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PCRE, Python, and Ruby) and eight programming languages (C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and VB.NET). It's targeted at people with regex skills from beginner to upper intermediate, and there's a fair amount of information in there even for people who already consider themselves regex experts. For those who'd like to know more, Jan has a good summary on his blog, and here is O'Reilly's press release for the book.

Don't forget to pick up a copy of your very own.

XRegExp 0.5 Released!

Update: This version of XRegExp is outdated. See XRegExp.com for the latest, greatest version.

If you haven't seen the prior versions, XRegExp is an MIT-licensed JavaScript library that provides an augmented, cross-browser implementation of regular expressions, including support for additional modifiers and syntax. Several convenience methods and a new, powerful recursive-construct parser that uses regex delimiters are also included.

Here's what you get beyond the standard JavaScript regex features:

  • Added regex syntax:
    • Comprehensive named capture support. (Improved)
    • Comment patterns: (?#…). (New)
  • Added regex modifiers (flags):
    • s (singleline), to make dot match all characters including newlines.
    • x (extended), for free-spacing and comments.
  • Added awesome:
    • Reduced cross-browser inconsistencies. (More)
    • Recursive-construct parser with regex delimiters. (New)
    • An easy way to cache and reuse regex objects. (New)
    • The ability to safely embed literal text in your regex patterns. (New)
    • A method to add modifiers to existing regex objects.
    • Regex call and apply methods, which make generically working with functions and regexes easier. (New)

All of this can be yours for the low, low price of 2.4 KB. smile Version 0.5 also introduces extensive documentation and code examples.

If you're using a previous version, note that there are a few non-backward compatible changes for the sake of strict ECMA-262 Edition 3 compliance and compatibility with upcoming ECMAScript 4 changes.

  • The XRegExp.overrideNative function has been removed, since it is no longer possible to override native constructors in Firefox 3 or ECMAScript 4 (as proposed).
  • Named capture syntax has been changed from (<name>…) to (?<name>…), which is the standard in most regex libraries and under consideration for ES4. Named capture is now always available, and does not require the k modifier.
  • Due to cross-browser compatibility issues, previous versions enforced that a leading, unescaped ] within a character class was treated as a literal character, which is how things work in most regex flavors. XRegExp now follows ECMA-262 Edition 3 on this point. [] is an empty set and never matches (this is enforced in all browsers).

Get it while it's hot! Check out the new XRegExp documentation and source code.

Date Format 1.1

I've just updated my ColdFusion-inspired JavaScript Date Format script to version 1.0 1.1, and updated the documentation in the old post along with it. The new release includes "Z" (US timezone abbreviation) and "o" (UTC offset) flags as well as brevity enhancements from Scott Trenda, along with several other new features including a standalone dateFormat function, named and default masks (plus you can easily add your own), easier internationalization, etc.

This update includes one change which is not backwards compatible: mask characters and sequences no longer have to comprise entire words for them to be treated specially. The former handling was intended to make it dead-easy to mix literal characters into date masks, but ended up mostly just being a slight nuisance since most people didn't use it to embed dates in larger strings.

Check out the new Date Format!


Edit: Date Format is now integrated into two JavaScript frameworks:

  • CFJS is a library of almost 70 ColdFusion functions written in JavaScript by Chris Jordan. CFJS has used Date Format, which was a natural fit since it's largely based on ColdFusion's dateFormat and timeFormat functions, since version 0.1.
  • Chiron is an innovative, emerging JavaScript library by Kris Kowal. It's based on Python idioms, and at its heart is an advanced module loader and isolation system the likes of which hasn't been seen yet in the JavaScript world. In addition to integrating Date Format as a module called date.js, Chiron has also integrated my XRegExp library, and uses regular expressions from parseUri in its core. Expect to hear more about Chiron as it gets closer to 0.1 release.

RegexPal Now Open Source

RegexPal (easily the most del.icio.used regex tester wink) is now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License GNU LGPL.

There are certainly many more features that can be added to the app and things that can be improved, so if you are interested in helping out or creating your own version, you are welcome to do so. If there is interest I'll create a Google Code project, but for now there is a package you can download which includes all files for the regexpal.com website. Two of the files in the package (xregexp.js and helpers.js) are dual-licensed under the MIT License.

If you're only interested in the JavaScript, you can see the three source files here:

For regex aficionados particularly, there is some stuff here you might find interesting, including the latest, as-yet-unreleased version of my XRegExp library, and the regex syntax parser used for RegexPal's syntax highlighting (which includes lots of details on the minutiae of regex syntax and cross-browser regex handling).