Question

given:

var regexp = new RegExp("<~~include(.*?)~~>", "g");

What’s the easist way in javascript to assign a variable to whatever’s matched by .*?

I can do this, but it’s a little ugly:

myString.match(regexp).replace("<~~include", "").replace("~~>", "");

Answer 1

JavaScript should return an array object on a regex match, where the zero index of the array is the whole string that was matched, and the following indexes are the capture groups. In your case, something like:

var myVar = regexp.exec(myString)[1];

Should assign the value of the (.*?) capture group to myVar.