[whatwg] Web Forms: pattern attribute

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Tue Aug 15 02:19:17 PDT 2006


On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Michel Fortin wrote:
>
> Something about the pattern attribute in Web Forms got me thinking:
> 
> > The regular expression language used for this attribute is the same as that
> > defined in [ECMA262], except that the pattern attribute implies a ^ at the
> > start of the pattern and a $ at the end (so the pattern must match the
> > entire value, not just any subset).
> 
> Does that mean that a pattern attribute like "foo|bar" should translate 
> to /^foo|bar$/ ? Wouldn't it make more sense it it was /^(foo|bar)$/ 
> with the parentesis?
> 
> Because in the first case it would match either something that begins by 
> "foo" (like "football") or ending with "bar" (like "babar"). In the 
> second case it would match only "foo" or "bar", nothing else. The later 
> interpretation seems more in line with the intent, but I suppose this 
> could be made clearer.

Good point. Fixed. Thanks.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


More information about the whatwg mailing list