Question

I had the same question with $$ signs (question with $$), but can’t get it to work (same code) with \[ and \] signs. I need regex pattern to recognize when I’m inside those signs (I can have multiple ones in the same text, they all should be covered).

text.replace(/\$.*?\$/g, function(m, n){
    if(caret > n && caret < (n + m.length)){
        alert("BOOM");
    }
});

So /\$.*?\$/g should become something else so it recognizes when I’m inside \[ and \] signs. Regular replacing doesn’t work (/\\[.*?\\]/g).

Also \[some\thing\] should work – it should select some\thing (\ shouldn’t make any troubles).

Answer 1

If you want to match \[ literally, you have to escape both characters, \ and [, thus it becomes \\\[ (the same for \]).

In general: Whenever you want to match a character with a special meaning, you have to escape it with \.

But note that the backslash is the escape character in strings as well. So if you defined a string as:

"\[some\thing\]"

the actual value is

"[some  hing]"

(\t is a tab)

You’d have to escape \ here as well:

"\\[some\\thing\\]"
//  "\[some\thing\]"

So before you think about a regular expression, double check the actual input.