index.md

---

title: regexp:match()
slug: Web/EXSLT/regexp/match

---

{{XSLTRef}}{{QuickLinksWithSubpages("/en-US/docs/Web/EXSLT")}}

regexp:match() performs regular expression matching on a string, returning the submatches found as a result.

Syntax

regexp:match(targetString, regExpString[, flagsString])

Parameters

• targetString

  • : The string to perform regular expression matching upon.

• regExpString

  • : The JavaScript style regular expression to evaluate.

• flagsString {{optional_inline}}

  • : An optional string containing character flags.

The character flags are:

• g

  • : Global match. The submatches from every match in the string are returned. If this flag isn't specified, only the submatches from the first match are returned.

• i

  • : Case insensitive match. If this flag is specified, the match is performed in a case insensitive fashion.

Returns

A node set of match elements, each of which has the string value equal to a portion of the first parameter string as captured by the regular expression. If the match isn't a global one, the first match element has the value of the portion of the string matched by the entire regular expression.

For example:

<xsl:for-each select="regExp:match('https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Firefox_3_for_developers',
                                   '(\w+):\/\/([^/:]+)(:\d*)?([^# ]*)')">
   Part <xsl:value-of select="position()" /> = <xsl:value-of select="." />
</xsl:for-each>

This code generates the following output:

Part 1 = https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Firefox_3_for_developers
Part 2 = https
Part 3 = developer.mozilla.org
Part 4 =
Part 5 = /en/docs/Firefox_3_for_developers

Specifications

EXSLT - REGEXP:MATCH