Javascript "Like" and "*" expression Eqv from VBA

Question

i recently started working with Javascript coming from VBA i would like to know if there is an equivalent to vba's "like" and "*" expressions.

Example:

If test Like "01##############10*" Then

Answer 1

Yes, you're looking for regular expressions. For instance, if # means "digit" and * means "anything" in your example, the regex would be /^01\d{13}10/, e.g.:

if (/^01\d{13}10/.test(test)) {

Which says:

• ^ - Match start of string ("start assertion" or "start anchor")
• 01 - Match 01 literally
• \d{13} - Match a digit (\d) exactly 13 times
• 10 - Match 10 literally

The absense of a $ anchor means we don't care what follows after the above.

Regular expressions are objects with methods. One of those methods, test, checks to see if a string matches the expression, one of the most basic operations available. There's also exec (find the first/next match). Coming at it from the other side, strings also have a match method which accepts a regular expression and looks for matches within the string.

More on regex:

• MDN
• SO Regular Expression FAQ

Answer 2

JavaScript has RegEx. With RegEx you can try to build anything like "Like" or "*".

In general - unfortunately anything that is available in VBA is available in the other top languages. The vice versa is not always the case.

This is how to search for vi*:

var myStr = "vityata";
if (myStr.match(/vi.*/)) {
  // your code here
}

A little more here: Emulating SQL LIKE in JavaScript