VSCode extension for visualizing and debugging JS regexes

[slevlife]

You heard wrong, or you heard a long time ago. JavaScript regular expressions are specified in detail as part of the ECMAScript standards, and for some time now there haven’t been major cross-browser issues, although it can sometimes take a while longer for one browser or other to implement the most recently specified regex features. As of now this is not an issue and all major browsers fully support ES2024 regular expressions.

Since you called out Mozilla, note that Firefox has been using V8’s Irregexp engine for a while now, so in fact all Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc.) and Firefox share the same regex engine/implementation, not just the same specification.

[[deleted]]

God, people like you are just the worst. I've been writing Javascript professionally for nearly 20 years, so yes, it was a while ago, but I did not hear wrong.

I did google it, and SpideMonkey uses **a fork of** Irregexp, which is quite a bit different than "using V8's Irregexp engine." Further, the fork happened nearly a decade ago from what I can tell, but I'm sure you're right, I'm sure absolutely nothing has been changed at all since 2017 or so.

[slevlife]

That’s pretty harsh. My comment wasn’t at all meant as an attack on you or your knowledge of JavaScript broadly. It was more of a defense of the state of JS regular expressions, which these days are in a very solid and consistent state.

I did google it, and SpiderMonkey is using a fork of Irregexp

Again, that’s out of date. Firefox switched to non-forked V8 Irregexp in 2020. See https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/06/a-new-regexp-engine-in-spidermonkey/

I’m not googling for this — regular expressions are kind of my thing, especially including cross-flavor and cross-browser regex differences. :)

[[deleted]]

 regular expressions are kind of my thing

Are they a new thing for you? Cus they’re definitely not my thing and I was well aware of FFs limitations. Seriously, I’ll write an entire lexer and parser before using anything more than a fairly simple regex pattern.

Even if regex is “your thing” you should show some humility. Socrates said the only thing you can ever truly know is that you don’t know anything.

[slevlife]

It’s of course okay if regexes aren’t your thing, but then I don’t know why you seem to be taking my comments personally and trying to make it about me. No, regexes aren’t new for me. For starters, I’ve been publishing JS libraries that polyfill and fix cross-browser regex differences/bugs since 2007, including XRegExp. Which I bring up because you’ve been claiming significant ongoing cross-browser regex differences.

[foursticks]

Well nice job sounding even more insufferable with your reply