Question

I have a working reg exp:

  var re = /([^\wåäö]*?)([\wåäö]+)([^\wåäö&]?|$)|.+/ig;

When I replace it with this one it does not work any more:

  var re = new RegExp("([^\wåäö]*?)([\wåäö]+)([^\wåäö&]?|$)|.+", "ig");

Should not these two be the same?

Answer 1

You should escape the \ using \\. When you type, for instance, \w inside a regular expression literal (/\w/), it follows the regular expression syntax (which allow w after a \). When you do the same thing inside a string, it follows the string syntax, which does not allow it. So, you shoud instead write "\\w" to achieve the same effect (in other words, the RegExp’s source will be \w).