Flash CS3 Documentation |
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| Programming ActionScript 3.0 > Using regular expressions > Regular expression syntax > Alternation | |||
Use the | (pipe) character in a regular expression to have the regular expression engine consider alternatives for a match. For example, the following regular expression matches any one of the words cat, dog, pig, rat:
var pattern:RegExp = /cat|dog|pig|rat/;
You can use parentheses to define groups to restrict the scope of the | alternator. The following regular expression matches cat followed by nap or nip:
var pattern:RegExp = /cat(nap|nip)/;
For more information, see Groups.
The following two regular expressions, one using the | alternator, the other using a character class (defined with [ and ] ), are equivalent:
/1|3|5|7|9/ /[13579]/
For more information, see Character classes.
Flash CS3