escaping question mark in regex javascript

Question

This is a simple question I think.

I am trying to search for the occurrence of a string in another string using regex in JavaScript like so:

 var content ="Hi, I like your Apartment. Could we schedule a viewing? My phone number is: ";

 var gent = new RegExp("I like your Apartment. Could we schedule a viewing? My", "g");

 if(content.search(gent) != -1){   
     alert('worked');     
 }          

This doesn't work because of the ? character....I tried escaping it with \, but that doesn't work either. Is there another way to use ? literally instead of as a special character?

Answer 1

You need to escape it with two backslashes

\\?

See this for more details:

http://www.trans4mind.com/personal_development/JavaScript/Regular%20Expressions%20Simple%20Usage.htm

Answer 2

You should use double slash:

var regex = new RegExp("\\?", "g");

Why? because in JavaScript the \ is also used to escape characters in strings, so: "\?" becomes: "?"

And "\\?", becomes "\?"

Answer 3

You can delimit your regexp with slashes instead of quotes and then a single backslash to escape the question mark. Try this:

var gent = /I like your Apartment. Could we schedule a viewing\?/g;

Answer 4

Whenever you have a known pattern (i.e. you do not use a variable to build a RegExp), use literal regex notation where you only need to use single backslashes to escape special regex metacharacters:

var re = /I like your Apartment\. Could we schedule a viewing\?/g;
                               ^^                            ^^

Whenever you need to build a RegExp dynamically, use RegExp constructor notation where you MUST double backslashes for them to denote a literal backslash:

var questionmark_block = "\\?"; // A literal ?
var initial_subpattern = "I like your Apartment\\. Could we schedule a viewing"; // Note the dot must also be escaped to match a literal dot
var re = new RegExp(initial_subpattern + questionmark_block, "g");

And if you use the String.raw string literal you may use \ as is (see an example of using a template string literal where you may put variables into the regex pattern):

const questionmark_block = String.raw`\?`; // A literal ?
const initial_subpattern = "I like your Apartment\\. Could we schedule a viewing";
const re = new RegExp(`${initial_subpattern}${questionmark_block}`, 'g'); // Building pattern from two variables
console.log(re); // => /I like your Apartment\. Could we schedule a viewing\?/g

A must-read: RegExp: Description at MDN.