regexNamedCaptureGroups

Reports capturing groups in regular expressions that do not have a name.

✅ This rule is included in the ts preset.

Named capture groups ((?<name>...)) provide several advantages over numbered capture groups:

• They make regex patterns more self-documenting
• They are easier to reference in replacement strings
• They don’t break when the order of groups changes
• They work better with destructuring in match results

If a capture is not actually needed, consider using a non-capturing group (?:...) instead.

This rule reports capturing groups in regular expressions that do not have a name.

Examples

❌ Incorrect

const pattern = /([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})/;

const pattern = /(foo)(bar)/;

✅ Correct

const pattern = /(?<year>[0-9]{4})-(?<month>[0-9]{2})-(?<day>[0-9]{2})/;

// Non-capturing groups when capture is not needed
const pattern = /(?:foo)(?:bar)/;

// Mix of named and non-capturing groups
const pattern = /(?<protocol>https?):\/\/(?:www\.)?(?<domain>[^/]+)/;

Options

This rule is not configurable.

When Not To Use It

If you have a large codebase with many existing unnamed capture groups that would be difficult to refactor, you might prefer to disable this rule. Some developers also find numbered groups sufficient for simple regex patterns with few groups.

Further Reading

• MDN: Regular expressions - Named capturing group
• MDN: Regular expressions - Non-capturing group

Equivalents in Other Linters

• ESLint: prefer-named-capture-groupregexp/prefer-named-capture-group