Metropolitan State University

ICS 225 Web Design and Implementation

Lab 4: Strings and Regular Expressions

Objectives: In this lab, you will work with JavaScript

• regular expressions

Part I. Practice with Regular Expressions

1. Practice reading and understanding regular expression by playing with this test program: http://cs.metrostate.edu/~fitzgesu/courses/ics225/fall2009/examples/regexp/regexp.html Choose strings to match the patterns given in the example.

2. Use View | Source to look at the code. Find this section:

function checkpattern ( pat, str ) {

if ( str.match(pat) ) // if result is not null

alert ("Matched!");

else

alert ("No match");

}

• Would the pattern matching function, search() work as well as the function match() here? If so, what changes would need to be made to the code?
• What about the pattern matching function, test()?

Part II. Practice Some More with Regular Expressions

McFarland has provided a regular expression sandbox which I have posted at: http://cs.metrostate.edu/~fitzgesu/courses/ics225/fall2009/examples/regexp/regex_tester.html

Play with this regular expression tester. At a minimum, create and test regular expressions for

• 5 digit zip code
• 9 digit zip code
• either 5 digit or 9 digit zip code
• U.S. phone number
• phone number with spaces or dashes or periods separating the components
• email address
• date with 2 digit year
• date with 4 digit year
• date with elements separated by dashes or slashes
• web address

Hint: see McFarland, pages 126-130