Availability

JavaScript 1.2; JScript 3.0; ECMAScript v3

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 the RegExp( ) constructor.

Returns

The position of the start of the first substring of string that matches regexp, or -1 if no match was 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