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JavaScript Regular Expressions in JavaScript Validating a Form Validating an Email

Posted by L Haney
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L Haney
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 10,263 Points

Confused about /^[^@]+@[^@.]+\.[a-z]+$/i.test(email);

What does [^@] mean? Does it mean "any character" in JavaScript? Also, a simpler way to do this would be ^.*@.*\.[a-z]+$

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,275 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,275 Points

In a regular expression, "[^@]" is what's known as a "character class" and it means "any character other than an @ (at-sign)".

The brackets indicate a character class (code that will represent a single character), and when the first thing in it is a caret (^), it means "anything but" whatever follows. The @ has no special meaning and just represents itself.

So you don't want to replace it with the dot wildcard, because that would also match @.