RegExp.prototype.exec()

The exec() method executes a search for a match in a specified string. Returns a result array, or null.

JavaScript RegExp objects are stateful when they have the global or sticky flags set (e.g. /foo/g or /foo/y). They store a lastIndex from the previous match. Using this internally, exec() can be used to iterate over multiple matches in a string of text (with capture groups), as opposed to getting just the matching strings with String.prototype.match().

A newer function has been proposed to simplify matching multiple parts of a string (with capture groups): String.prototype.matchAll().

If you are executing a match simply to find true or false, use RegExp.prototype.test() method or String.prototype.search() instead.

The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.

Syntax

regexObj.exec(str)

Parameters

str

The string against which to match the regular expression.

Return value

If the match succeeds, the exec() method returns an array (with extra properties index and input; see below) and updates the lastIndex property of the regular expression object. The returned array has the matched text as the first item, and then one item for each parenthetical capture group of the matched text.

If the match fails, the exec() method returns null, and sets lastIndex to 0.

Description

Consider the following example:

// Match "quick brown" followed by "jumps", ignoring characters in between
// Remember "brown" and "jumps"
// Ignore case
let re = /quick\s(brown).+?(jumps)/ig;
let result = re.exec('The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog');

The following table shows the results for this script:

Examples

Finding successive matches

If your regular expression uses the "g" flag, you can use the exec() method multiple times to find successive matches in the same string. When you do so, the search starts at the substring of str specified by the regular expression's lastIndex property (test() will also advance the lastIndex property).  Note that the lastIndex property will not be reset when searching a different string, it will start its search at its existing lastIndex .

For example, assume you have this script:

let myRe = /ab*/g;
let str = 'abbcdefabh';
let myArray;
while ((myArray = myRe.exec(str)) !== null) {
  let msg = 'Found ' + myArray[0] + '. ';
  msg += 'Next match starts at ' + myRe.lastIndex;
  console.log(msg);
}

This script displays the following text:

Found abb. Next match starts at 3
Found ab. Next match starts at 9

Using exec() with RegExp literals

You can also use exec() without creating a RegExp object explicitly:

let matches = /(hello \S+)/.exec('This is a hello world!');
console.log(matches[1]);

This will log a message containing 'hello world!'.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Regular Expressions chapter in the JavaScript Guide
• RegExp