I want to do a string search inside a string. Simply saying MySTR.search(Needle).

The problem occurs when this needle string contains special regex characters like *,+ and so on. It fails with error invalid quantifier.

I have browsed the web and found out that string can be escaped with \Q some string \E.

However, this does not always produce the desired behavior. For example:

var sNeedle = '*Stars!*';
var sMySTR = 'The contents of this string have no importance';
sMySTR.search('\Q' + sNeedle + '\E');

Result is -1. OK.

var sNeedle = '**Stars!**';
var sMySTR = 'The contents of this string have no importance';
sMySTR.search('\Q' + sNeedle + '\E');

Result is "invalid quantifier". This happens because 2 or more special characters are 'touching' each other, because:

var sNeedle = '*Dont touch me*Stars!*Dont touch me*';
var sMySTR = 'The contents of this string have no importance';
sMySTR.search('\Q' + sNeedle + '\E');

Will work OK.

I know I could make a function escapeAllBadChars(sInStr) and just add double slashes before every possible special regex character, but I'm wondering if there is a simpler way to do it?

javascript regex escaping
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