Serialization of RegExp

Question

So, I was interested to find that JSON.stringify reduces a RegExp to an empty object-literal (fiddle):

JSON.stringify(/^[0-9]+$/) // \"{}\"
         


        

Answer 1

I think a good approach would be something like this:

function stringifyFilter(key,value) {
    if (value instanceof RegExp) {
        return value.toString();
    }

    return value;
}

var myObj = {
    text : 'Howdy ho!',
    pattern : /[a-z]+/i
}

JSON.stringify(myObj,stringifyFilter); // output: {"text":"Howdy ho!","pattern":"/[a-z]+/i"}