Escaping, Special Characters

The escape function is a global object property. It figures a new string where particular characters are replaced by a hexadecimal escape sequence.

The special characters are usually encoded by using the exception of @*_+-./. They are used mainly for doing more powerful searches. The full list of the special characters looks as follows: [ \ ^ $ . | ? * + ( ).

Escaping¶

Imagine that you want to search for a dot. To meet that goal you need to use a special character like a regular one, prepending it with a backslash \ (also known as “escaping a character”), like this:

console.log("Chapter 7.1".match(/\d\.\d/)); // 7.1 (match!)

console.log("Chapter 711".match(/\d\.\d/)); // null (searching for a real dot \.)

Parentheses also relate to the special characters. Hence, if you want them you can use \(. Let’s try to look for "g()" string:

console.log("function g()".match(/g\(\)/)); // "g()"

If you are searching for a backslash \, it is a special character in both regexps and strings. So, it should be doubled like this:

console.log("1\\2".match(/\\/)); // '\'

A Slash¶

Although a slash '/' is not a special character, in JavaScript, it is used for opening and closing a regexp. Therefore, you should escape it, too.

The search for a '/' is visualized in the example below:

console.log("/".match(/\//)); // '/'

In case you don’t use /.../ but create regexp using new RegExp, then it is not necessary to escape it:

console.log("/".match(new RegExp("/"))); // finds /

The New Regexp

While creating a regular expression using new RegExp, then it is not necessary to escape / but some other escaping should be done.

Let’s consider the following example:

let regexp = new RegExp("\d\.\d");

console.log("Chapter 3.2".match(regexp)); // null

Such a search works with /\d\.\d/, but new RegExp("\d\.\d") is invalid. Let’s find out why.

The primary reason is that a string consumes backslashes. Regular strings contain own special characters such as \n. And backslash is applied for escaping.

The“\d.\d” is perceived in this way:

console.log("\d\.\d"); // d.d

Backslashes are consumed by string quotes and interpreted on their own, as follows:

• \n transforms into a newline character.
• \u1234 transforms into the Unicode character.
• When there is not any special meaning such as \d or \z, the backslash should be removed.

The new RegExp receives a string without the backslash. For this reason, the search fails.

For fixing it, you should double backslashes as string quotes turn \\ into \, like here:

let regStr = "\\d\\.\\d";

console.log(regStr); // \d\.\d (correct now)

let regexp = new RegExp(regStr);

console.log("Chapter 3.2".match(regexp)); // 3.2

Summary¶

Each programming language has its special characters, meaning something special such as identifying a variable, the end of a line, and so on. JavaScript also provides a range of functions that can encode and decode special characters.

So, the escape function, in JavaScript is considered a property of the global object. Special characters are used for making more powerful and significant searches.