regexWordMatchers

Reports character classes that match word characters and could use \w or \W instead.

✅ This rule is included in the ts stylisticStrict presets.

JavaScript regular expressions support word matcher escape sequences \w and \W instead of [a-zA-Z0-9_] and [^a-zA-Z0-9_], respectively, for regular expressions. Those escape sequences are more concise than writing out the full character class sets.

This rule reports on any character sets that can be replaced by \w or \W word matchers.

Examples

Word Character Class

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /[0-9a-zA-Z_]+/;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /\w+/;

Negated Word Character Class

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /[^0-9a-zA-Z_]/;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /\W/;

With Ignore Case Flag

When the i flag is used, [a-z] already covers both lowercase and uppercase letters:

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /[0-9a-z_]/i;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /\w/i;

RegExp Constructor

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = new RegExp("[0-9a-zA-Z_]+");

✅ Correct

const pattern = new RegExp("\\w+");

Options

This rule is not configurable.

When Not To Use It

If your codebase has an established convention of using explicit character classes for readability, or if you prefer consistency with patterns that use partial word character ranges (like [a-z0-9]), you might prefer to disable this rule.

Further Reading

• MDN: Character class escape \w
• MDN: Character class

Equivalents in Other Linters

• ESLint: regexp/prefer-w