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 regexp is passed, it is implicitly converted to a RegExp with new RegExp(regexp).

Return value

The index of the first match between the regular expression and the given string, or -1 if no match was found.

Description

When you want to know whether a pattern is found, and also know its index within 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 two different regex objects to show a successful search (positive value) vs. an unsuccessful search (-1)

let str = "hey JudE"
let re = /[A-Z]/g
let reDot = /[.]/g
console.log(str.search(re))    // returns 4, which is the index of the first capital letter "J"
console.log(str.search(reDot)) // 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.

See also

• Using regular expressions in JavaScript
• String.prototype.match()
• RegExp.prototype.exec()