Regex won't find '\u2028' unicode characters.

Question

We're having a lot of trouble tracking down the source of \u2028 (Line Separator) in user submitted data which causes the 'unterminated string literal' error in Firefox.

As a result, we're looking at filtering it out before submitting it to the server (and then the database).

After extensive googling and reading of other people's problems, it's clear I have to filter these characters out before submitting to the database.

Before writing the filter, I attempted to search for the character just to ensure it can find it using:

var index = content.search("/\u2028/");
alert("Index: [" + index + "]");

I get -1 as the result everytime, even when I know the character is in the content variable (I've confirmed via a Java jUnit test on the server side).

Assuming that content.replace() would work the same way as search(), is there something I'm doing wrong or anything I'm missing in order to find and strip these line separators?

Answer 1

Your regex syntax is incorrect. You only use the two forward slashes when using a regex literal. It should be just:

var index = content.search("\u2028");

or:

var index = content.search(/\u2028/); // regex literal

But this should really be done on the server, if anywhere. JavaScript sanitization can be trivially bypassed. It's only useful for user convenience, and I don't think accidentally entering line separator is that common.