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JSLint reports "Insecure ^" for my regex -- what does that mean?

I'm trying to get my Javascript code 100% JSLint clean.

I've got a regular expression:

 linkRgx = /https?:\/\/[^\s;|\\*'"!,()<>]+/g;

JSLint reports:

 Insecure '^'

What makes the use of the negation of the character set "insecure" ?

Solution

  • [^\s;|\\*'"!,()<>] matches any ASCII character other than the ones listed, and any non-ASCII character. Since JavaScript strings are Unicode-aware, that means every character known to Unicode. I can see a lot of potential for mischief there.

    Rather than disable the warning, I would rewrite the character class to match the characters you do want to allow, as this regex from the Regular Expressions Cookbook does:

    /\bhttps?:\/\/[-\w+&@#/%?=~|$!:,.;]*[\w+&@#/%=~|$]/g