Question

I want to extract "abc" from "images/abc.png" using Javascript Regular experssion in one line.

i have tried this

<script type="text/javascript">
var str = "images/abc.png";
var patt1 = /images\/[a-z]+?/i;
document.write(str.split(patt1));
</script>

Answer 1

You want to use a capture group, e.g.:

var match = "images/abc.png".match(/images\/([^.]+)\.png/);
var text = match && match[1];

You can do it on one line only if you know that it will match; otherwise you’ll get an exception.

Actually, I could cheat and use the comma operator to get it on one line:

var match = "images/abc.png".match(/images\/([^.]+)\.png/), text = match && match[1];

…but I think it looses a lot of clarity.

The MDC page on regular expressions is useful reading.