Name
String.search() — search for a regular expression
Synopsis
string
.
search
(
regexp
)
Arguments
regexp
A RegExp object that specifies the pattern to be searched for in
string
. If this argument is not a RegExp, it is first converted to one by passing it to theRegExp()
constructor.
Returns
The position of the start of the first substring of
string
that matches
regexp
, or −1 if no match is
found.
Description
search()
looks for a
substring matching regexp
within
string
and returns the position of the
first character of the matching substring, or −1 if no match was
found.
search()
does not do global
matches; it ignores the g
flag.
It also ignores the lastIndex
property of regexp
and always searches
from the beginning of the string, which means that it always returns
the position of the first match in
string
.
Example
var
s
=
"JavaScript is fun"
;
s
.
search
(
/script/i
)
// Returns 4
s
.
search
(
/a(.)a/
)
// Returns 1
See Also
RegExp, RegExp.exec(), RegExp.test(), String.match(), String.replace(); Chapter 10
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