escape-regexp-modern

Tiny, zero-dependency, TypeScript-first function to safely escape strings for JavaScript/ECMAScript regular expressions.

Install

npm i escape-regexp-modern

Usage

// ESM
import escapeRegexp from "escape-regexp-modern";
// or: import { escapeRegexp } from "escape-regexp-modern";

console.log(escapeRegexp("a.b*")); // => a\.b\*

// Use with RegExp constructor
const userInput = "a.b*";
const re = new RegExp(escapeRegexp(userInput), "i");
console.log(re.test("xx a.b* yy")); // true

// CommonJS
const escapeRegexp = require("escape-regexp-modern");
console.log(escapeRegexp("a.b*")); // => a\.b\*

API

• escapeRegexp(input: string): string — Escapes all regex-special characters so the string can be used safely inside a RegExp constructor or literal.

Why use this?

• Tiny (<1 KB minified), zero-deps, TypeScript types included
• Deterministic, Unicode-safe; handles backslashes, control chars, emoji, surrogate pairs

Approach

Escapes using one global replacement that prefixes a backslash for each regex-special character (\\^$.*+?()[]{}|/-). Works for any Unicode input without altering non-special characters.

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License

MIT © Your Name

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome!