SyntaxError: raw bracket is not allowed in regular expression with unicode flag
The JavaScript exception "raw bracket is not allowed in regular expression with unicode flag" occurs when a Unicode-aware regular expression pattern contains a raw bracket ({
, }
, ]
) that is not part of a quantifier or character class.
Message
SyntaxError: Invalid regular expression: /{/u: Lone quantifier brackets (V8-based)
SyntaxError: raw bracket is not allowed in regular expression with unicode flag (Firefox)
SyntaxError: Invalid regular expression: incomplete {} quantifier for Unicode pattern (Safari)
SyntaxError: Invalid regular expression: unmatched ] or } bracket for Unicode pattern (Safari)
Error type
What went wrong?
In Unicode-unaware mode, {
, }
, and ]
that are not part of a quantifier or character class are treated as literal characters. This may hide errors in your code and is therefore deprecated and disallowed in Unicode-aware mode. You should either check whether you have invalid syntax or you should escape the characters to match them literally.
If {
appears in a context that accepts a quantifier, it is treated as the start of a quantifier. If what follows it is not a valid quantifier, another syntax error, incomplete quantifier, is thrown.
Examples
Invalid cases
/\{{MDN_Macro}}/u;
/\[sic]/u;
Valid cases
// All { and } need to be escaped
/\\{\\{MDN_Macro\\}\\}/u;
// The ] needs to be escaped
/\[sic\]/u;