Match All Letters and Numbers # 30

Using character classes, you were able to search for all letters of the alphabet with [a-z]. This kind of character class is common enough that there is a shortcut for it, although it includes a few extra characters as well.

The closest character class in JavaScript to match the alphabet is \w. This shortcut is equal to [A-Za-z0-9_]. This character class matches upper and lowercase letters plus numbers. Note, that this character class also includes the underscore character (_).

let longHand = /[A-Za-z0-9_]+/;
let shortHand = /\w+/;
let numbers = "42";
let varNames = "important_var";
longHand.test(numbers);
shortHand.test(numbers);
longHand.test(varNames);
shortHand.test(varNames);

All four of these test calls would return true.

These shortcut character classes are also known as shorthand character classes.