String Find and Replace Functions

To search for a string inside a string, there are several functions:

indexOf( searchString ) and lastIndexOf( searchString )

indexOf() will return the index of the first occurrence of searchString in the string. If searchString is not found, then -1 is returned.

var string = "Hello, World!";
console.log( string.indexOf("o") ); // 4
console.log( string.indexOf("foo") ); // -1

Similarly, lastIndexOf() will return the index of the last occurrence of searchstring or -1 if not found.

var string = "Hello, World!";
console.log( string.lastIndexOf("o") ); // 8
console.log( string.lastIndexOf("foo") ); // -1

includes( searchString, start )

includes() will return a boolean that tells whether searchString exists in the string, starting from index start (defaults to 0). This is better than indexOf() if you simply need to test for existence of a substring.

var string = "Hello, World!";
console.log( string.includes("Hello") ); // true
console.log( string.includes("foo") );   // false

replace( regexp|substring, replacement|replaceFunction )

replace() will return a string that has all occurrences of substrings matching the RegExp regexp or string substring with a string replacement or the returned value of replaceFunction.

Note that this does not modify the string in place, but returns the string with replacements.

var string = "Hello, World!";
string = string.replace( "Hello", "Bye" );
console.log( string ); // "Bye, World!"

string = string.replace( /W.{3}d/g, "Universe" );
console.log( string ); // "Bye, Universe!"

replaceFunction can be used for conditional replacements for regular expression objects (i.e., with use with regexp). The parameters are in the following order:

Parameter Meaning match the substring that matches the entire regular expressiong g1, g2, g3, ... the matching groups in the regular expression offset the offset of the match in the entire string string the entire string

Note that all parameters are optional.

var string = "heLlo, woRlD!";
string = string.replace( /([a-zA-Z])([a-zA-Z]+)/g, function(match, g1, g2) {
 return g1.toUpperCase() + g2.toLowerCase();
});
console.log( string ); // "Hello, World!"