See Also                  Applies To

Description

Compiles a regular expression into an internal format.

Syntax

rgexp.compile(pattern)

The compile method syntax has these parts:

Part	Description
rgexp	Required. A Regular Expression object. Can be a variable name or a literal.
pattern	Required. A string expression containing a regular expression pattern to be compiled.

Remarks

The compile method converts pattern into an internal format for faster execution. This allows for more efficient use of regular expressions in loops, for example.

The following example illustrates the use of the compile method:

function CompileDemo()
{
  var s = "AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPp"
  				// Create regular expression for uppercase only.
  var r = new RegExp("[A-Z]", "g");
  var a = s.match(r)	// Find matches.
  document.write(a);
  				// Compile regular expression for lowercase only.
  r.compile("[a-z]", "g");
  var a = s.match(r)	// Find matches.
  document.write(a);
}