JavaScript | string.search() Method

The string.search() method is the inbuilt method in JavaScript which is used to search for a match in between regular expressions and a given string object.

Syntax:

string.search( A )

Parameters: This method accepts single parameter A which holds the regular expression as object.



Return Value: This function returns the index of the first match string in between regular expression and the given string object and returns -1 if no match found. Indexing starts from zero (0) and in a first attempt, an alphabet is matched, then it does not check further simply it returns the index of that first matched alphabet.

Below examples illustrate the string.search() method in JavaScript:

Example 1:

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<script>
  
// Taking input a string.
var string = "GeeksforGeeks";
  
// Taking a regular expression.
var re1 = /G/;
var re2 = /e/;
var re3 = /s/;
  
// Printing the index of matching alphabets
document.write(string.search(re1) + "<br>");
document.write(string.search(re2) + "<br>");
document.write(string.search(re3));
  
< /script>

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Output:

0
1
4

Example 2: This example returns -1, because of no match found in between regular expression and the input string.

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<script>
  
// Taking input a string.
var string = "GeeksforGeeks";
  
// Taking a regular expression.
var re1 = /p/;
var re2 = /1/;
var re3 = / /;
var re4 = /, /;
  
// Printing the index of matching alphabets
document.write(string.search(re1) + "<br>");
document.write(string.search(re2) + "<br>");
document.write(string.search(re3) + "<br>");
document.write(string.search(re4));
  
< /script>

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Output:

-1
-1
-1
-1


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