Find programming languages
There are many programming languages, for instance Java, JavaScript, PHP, C, C++.
Create a regexp that finds them in the string Java JavaScript PHP C++ C
:
let regexp = /your regexp/g;
alert("Java JavaScript PHP C++ C".match(regexp)); // Java JavaScript PHP C++ C
The first idea can be to list the languages with |
in-between.
But that doesn???t work right:
let regexp = /Java|JavaScript|PHP|C|C\+\+/g;
let str = "Java, JavaScript, PHP, C, C++";
alert( str.match(regexp) ); // Java,Java,PHP,C,C
The regular expression engine looks for alternations one-by-one. That is: first it checks if we have Java
, otherwise ??? looks for JavaScript
and so on.
As a result, JavaScript
can never be found, just because Java
is checked first.
The same with C
and C++
.
There are two solutions for that problem:
- Change the order to check the longer match first:
JavaScript|Java|C\+\+|C|PHP
. - Merge variants with the same start:
Java(Script)?|C(\+\+)?|PHP
.
In action:
let regexp = /Java(Script)?|C(\+\+)?|PHP/g;
let str = "Java, JavaScript, PHP, C, C++";
alert( str.match(regexp) ); // Java,JavaScript,PHP,C,C++