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@slevithan
Created August 24, 2012 00:36
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A comparison of how to safely iterate over all regex matches, when accepting an arbitrary regex.
// Using native JavaScript...
function getMatches(str, regex) {
var matches = [];
var match;
if (regex.global) {
regex.lastIndex = 0;
} else {
regex = new RegExp(regex.source, 'g' +
(regex.ignoreCase ? 'i' : '') +
(regex.multiline ? 'm' : '') +
(regex.sticky ? 'y' : ''));
}
while (match = regex.exec(str)) {
// If you want to use regex.lastIndex in this loop, you'd need more
// code here to fix IE < 9
matches.push(match);
if (regex.lastIndex === match.index) {
regex.lastIndex++;
}
}
return matches;
}
// Using XRegExp...
function getMatches(str, regex) {
return XRegExp.forEach(str, regex, function(match) {
this.push(match);
}, []);
}
@mathiasbynens
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So you’re using XRegExp.forEach as if it was reduce? Cool :)

@slevithan
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@mathiasbynens, XRegExp.forEach always returns its callback's context (this). You can set the context either by using a bind method or, as I did in this example, via the fourth argument.

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