Question

I have a very long regular expression, which I wish to split into multiple lines in my JavaScript code to keep each line length 80 characters according to JSLint rules. It’s just better for reading, I think.
Here’s pattern sample:

var pattern = /^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/;

Answer 1

[Edit 2022/08] Created a small github repository to create regular expressions with spaces, comments and templating.

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You could convert it to a string and create the expression by calling new RegExp():

var myRE = new RegExp (['^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\\s@\"]+(\\.[^<>(),[\]\\.,;:\\s@\"]+)*)',
                        '|(\\".+\\"))@((\\[[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.',
                        '[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\\.)+',
                        '[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$'].join(''));

Notes:

1. when converting the expression literal to a string you need to escape all backslashes as backslashes are consumed when evaluating a string literal. (See Kayo’s comment for more detail.)

2. RegExp accepts modifiers as a second parameter

   /regex/g => new RegExp('regex', 'g')

[Addition ES20xx (tagged template)]

In ES20xx you can use tagged templates. See the snippet.

Note:

• Disadvantage here is that you can’t use plain whitespace in the regular expression string (always use \s, \s+, \s{1,x}, \t, \n etc).

(() => {
  const createRegExp = (str, opts) => 
    new RegExp(str.raw[0].replace(/\s/gm, ""), opts || "");
  const yourRE = createRegExp`
    ^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|
    (\".+\"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|
    (([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$`;
  console.log(yourRE);
  const anotherLongRE = createRegExp`
    (\byyyy\b)|(\bm\b)|(\bd\b)|(\bh\b)|(\bmi\b)|(\bs\b)|(\bms\b)|
    (\bwd\b)|(\bmm\b)|(\bdd\b)|(\bhh\b)|(\bMI\b)|(\bS\b)|(\bMS\b)|
    (\bM\b)|(\bMM\b)|(\bdow\b)|(\bDOW\b)
    ${"gi"}`;
  console.log(anotherLongRE);
})();