Unmatchable dollar in regular expression¶

ID: js/regex/unmatchable-dollar
Kind: problem
Security severity: 
Severity: error
Precision: very-high
Tags:
   - quality
   - reliability
   - correctness
   - regular-expressions
   - external/cwe/cwe-561
Query suites:
   - javascript-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

The dollar character $ in a regular expression only matches at the end of the input, or (for multi-line regular expressions) at the end of a line. If it is followed by a pattern that must match a non-empty sequence of (non-newline) input characters, it cannot possibly match, rendering the entire regular expression unmatchable.

if (file.match(/\.\(\w+$\)/))
	console.log("Found it.");