The simplest possible way to use this library is to use the regex_is_match method. It simply ensures that a pattern can be found within a particular string. This can be very useful for determining if strings are in a specific format.
In this example, we determine if a string contains the word “hello”.
First we must create the regex. For this example, we’re not going to pass any options, and we’ll just give it a timeout of 3000ms. That number is completely arbitrary, so don’t worry too much about it.
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var regex = regex_create("hello", RO_NONE, 3000);
Now lets see if we can find the regex inside of a string.
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var found = regex_is_match(regex, "Hello, Regex");
if(found)
{
show_debug_message("Found the string!");
}
else
{
show_debug_message("Did not find the string.");
}
If we run the code right now, we’ll see that the string wasn’t found! That is because regex is case-sensitive, meaning that capital letters will only match other capital letters. There is an option to turn this off however. For now, let’s correct just change our pattern.
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var regex = regex_create("Hello", RO_NONE, 3000);
Now when we run the code, we’ll see the first message!
If you wanted to change the options instead of the pattern, you would do this instead:
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var regex = regex_create("hello", RO_IGNORE_CASE, 3000);
And you’ll get the same result.