Question

I have the following code:

var html = "<div class='test'><b>Hello</b> <i>world!</i></div>";
var results = html.match(/<(\/?) (\w+) ([^>]*?)>/);

About the three sets of parenthesis:

First mean: forward slash or nothing.

Second mean: one or more alphanumeric characters.

Third mean: anything but ‘>’ then I don’t understand the ‘*?’ !

Also how do I interpret the fact that there are three sets of parenthesis separated by white spaces?

Regards,

Answer 1

An asterisk (*) means match the preceding bit zero or more times. The preceding bit is [^>], meaning anything but a >. As @user278064 says, the ? is redundant. It’s meant to make the * non-greedy, but there’s no need as the [^>] already specifies what the * should refer to. (You could replace [^>] with a . (full-stop/period) which would match any character, then the ? would make sure it matches anything until >.)

As for the spaces, they shouldn’t be there… they literally match spaces, which I don’t think you want.