Javascript storing regex in a variable

Question

I have this line of code in javascript

var re = (http|ftp|https):\/\/[\w\-_]+(\.[\w\-_]+)+([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&/~\+#])?

Usually I encapsulate the regex syntax with the / characters but since they are found within the regex it screws up the encapsulation. Is there another way how I can store it inside the variable?

The current slashes that seem like escape characters are part of the regex, since I am using this in c# aswell and works perfectly

Answer 1

var re = new RegExp("^your regexp.*$", "gi");

Answer 2

You can escape the slash inside your regex:

/(http|ftp|https):\/\/[\w\-_]+(\.[\w\-_]+)+([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:\/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&\/~\+#])?/

(you already did so with the first two slashes...)

Answer 3

One way is to escape all occurances of / in your regex as \/, like you're already partially doing:

var re = /(http|ftp|https):\/\/[\w\-_]+(\.[\w\-_]+)+([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:\/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&\/~\+#])?/;