global Property

Returns a Boolean value indicating the state of the global flag (g) used with a regular expression.

rgExp.global

Arguments

• rgExp
  Required. An instance of a Regular Expression object.

Remarks

The global property is read-only, and returns true if the global flag is set for a regular expression, and returns false if it is not. The default value is false.

The global flag, when used, indicates that a search should find all occurrences of the pattern within the searched string, not just the first one. This is also known as global matching.

Example

The following example illustrates the use of the global property. If you pass g in to the function shown below, all instances of the word "the" are replaced with the word "a". Note that the "The" at the beginning of the string is not replaced because the i (ignore case) flag is not passed to the function.

This function displays the Boolean values that are associated with the allowable regular expression flags, which are g, i, and m. The function also displays the string with all replacements made.

function RegExpPropDemo(flag){
    // The flag parameter is a string that contains
    // g, i, or m.  The flags can be combined.

    // Check flags for validity.
    if (flag.match(/[^gim]/))
        {
        return ("Flag specified is not valid");
        }

    // Create the string on which to perform the replacement.
    var orig = "The batter hit the ball with the bat ";
    orig += "and the fielder caught the ball with the glove.";

    // Replace "the" with "a".
    var re = new RegExp("the", flag);
    var r = orig.replace(re, "a");        

    // Output the resulting string and the values of the flags.
    print ("global: " + re.global.toString());
    print ("ignoreCase: " + re.ignoreCase.toString());
    print ("multiline: " + re.multiline.toString());
    print ("Resulting String: " + r);
}

RegExpPropDemo("g");

The resulting output is the following:

global: true
ignoreCase: false
multiline: false
Resulting String: The batter hit a ball with a bat and a fielder caught a ball with a glove.

Requirements

Version 5.5

Applies To:

Regular Expression Object

See Also

Concepts

Regular Expression Syntax

Reference

ignoreCase Property

multiline Property

Change History

Date	History	Reason
July 2009	Modified example.	Content bug fix.
March 2009	Modified example.	Information enhancement.