Character Classes in JavaScript
From the JavaScript Regular Expressions cheat sheet · Basic Patterns · verified Jul 2026
Character Classes
Matching specific sets of characters
javascript
. Any character except newline
\d Digit (0-9)
\D Not a digit
\w Word character (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _)
\W Not a word character
\s Whitespace (space, tab, newline)
\S Not whitespace
[abc] Any of a, b, or c
[^abc] Not a, b, or c
[a-z] Character range a to z
[A-Z] Character range A to Z
[0-9] Any digit (same as \d)
// Examples
/\d{3}-\d{4}/.test("555-1234") // true (phone)
/[aeiou]/.test("hello") // true (vowel)
/[^0-9]/.test("abc") // true (non-digit)💡 Dot (.) matches any character except newline - use [\s\S] for all
⚡ Character classes can be negated with ^ inside brackets
📌 \w includes underscore (_) in word characters
🟢 Combine classes: [a-zA-Z0-9] for alphanumeric
character-classesbasics