Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd Edition

3.4. Set Regular Expression Options

Problem

You want to compile a regular expression with all of the available matching modes: free-spacing, case insensitive, dot matches line breaks, and “^ and $ match at line breaks.”

Solution

C#

Regex regexObj = new Regex("regex pattern",
    RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase |
    RegexOptions.Singleline | RegexOptions.Multiline);

VB.NET

Dim RegexObj As New Regex("regex pattern",
    RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace Or RegexOptions.IgnoreCase Or
    RegexOptions.Singleline Or RegexOptions.Multiline)

Java

Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("regex pattern",
    Pattern.COMMENTS | Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE | Pattern.UNICODE_CASE |
    Pattern.DOTALL | Pattern.MULTILINE);

JavaScript

Literal regular expression in your code:

var myregexp = /regex pattern/im;

Regular expression retrieved from user input, as a string:

var myregexp = new RegExp(userinput, "im");

XRegExp

var myregexp = XRegExp("regex pattern", "xism");

PHP

regexstring = '/regex pattern/xism';

Perl

m/regex pattern/xism;

Python

reobj = re.compile("regex pattern",
    re.VERBOSE | re.IGNORECASE |
    re.DOTALL | re.MULTILINE)

Ruby

Literal regular expression in your code:

myregexp = /regex pattern/xim;

Regular expression retrieved from user input, as a string:

myregexp = Regexp.new(userinput,
    Regexp::EXTENDED or Regexp::IGNORECASE or
    Regexp::MULTILINE);

Discussion

Many of the regular expressions in this book, and those that you find elsewhere, are written to be used with certain regex matching modes. There are four basic ...