regexControlCharacters

Reports control characters in regular expressions.

✅ This rule is included in the ts logical presets.

Reports control characters (code points U+0000 through U+001F) in regular expressions. Control characters in regex patterns are rarely intentional and can indicate a mistake or copy-paste error.

Examples

Hex Escapes

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /\x1f/;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /\x20/;

Unicode Escapes

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /\u001f/;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /\u0020/;

Control Character Escapes

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /\cA/;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /a/;

Options

This rule is not configurable.

When Not To Use It

If your application intentionally processes binary data or protocols that use control characters, and you need to match them in regular expressions, you might prefer to disable this rule.

Further Reading

• MDN: Control character
• MDN: Character escape

Equivalents in Other Linters

• Biome: noControlCharactersInRegex
• Deno: no-control-regex
• ESLint: no-control-regexregexp/no-control-character
• Oxlint: eslint/no-control-regex