String.prototype.search()

The search() method executes a search for a match between a regular expression and this String object.

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Syntax

str.search(regexp)

Parameters

regexp

A regular expression object. If a non-RegExp object obj is passed, it is implicitly converted to a RegExp by using new RegExp(obj).

Return value

The index of the first match between the regular expression and the given string; if not found, -1.

Description

When you want to know whether a pattern is found and also its index in a string use search() (if you only want to know if it exists, use the similar test() method on the RegExp prototype, which returns a boolean); for more information (but slower execution) use match() (similar to the regular expression exec() method).

Examples

Using search()

The following example searches a string with 2 different regex objects to show a successful search (positive value) vs. an unsuccessful search (-1)

var str = "hey JudE";
var re = /[A-Z]/g;
var re2 = /[.]/g;
console.log(str.search(re)); // returns 4, which is the index of the first capital letter "J"
console.log(str.search(re2)); // returns -1 cannot find '.' dot punctuation

Specifications

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Gecko-specific notes

• flags was a non standard second argument only available in Gecko : str.search(regexp, flags)
• Prior to Gecko 8.0, search() was implemented incorrectly; when it was called with no parameters or with undefined, it would match against the string 'undefined', instead of matching against the empty string. This is fixed; now 'a'.search() and 'a'.search(undefined) correctly return 0.
• Starting with Gecko 39 (Firefox 39 / Thunderbird 39 / SeaMonkey 2.36), the non-standard flags argument is deprecated and throws a console warning (bug 1142351).
• Starting with Gecko 47 (Firefox 47 / Thunderbird 47 / SeaMonkey 2.44), the non-standard flags argument is no longer supported in non-release builds and will soon be removed entirely (bug 1245801).
• Starting with Gecko 49 (Firefox 49 / Thunderbird 49 / SeaMonkey 2.46), the non-standard flags argument is no longer supported (bug 1108382).

See also

• String.prototype.match()
• RegExp.prototype.exec()