search

The search task takes a regular expression and a string, then searches for the first match of the expression within the string. The task returns the index (position) where a match is found — indexing starts at zero. If no match is found, the task returns -1.

Potential use case

Use search to check whether a certain pattern exists in a string and to find its position. In conjunction with the substr method, you can use search to find and replace text in a data record.

Properties

Input	Type	Description
`str`	String	Required. The string to search.
`regexp`	String	Required. The regular expression pattern to match.

Output	Type	Description
`index`	Number	The position of the first match between the regular expression and the string. Returns `-1` if not found. The first character is at position `0`.

Example 1

In this example:

str is statically set to Hello World.
regexp is or.
The index result is 7, indicating the pattern "or" is located at position 7 in the string.

search task with str 'Hello World' and regexp 'or'

Example 2

In this example:

str is Hey Dr. Livingstone.
regexp is \., a special character class notation indicating the match should be a period (.).
The index result is 6, indicating the period is located at position 6 in the string.

For more information, see Using character classes in regular expressions on MDN.

search task with str 'Hey Dr. Livingstone' and regexp '\.'

Example 3

In this example:

str is Hey Judey.
regexp is \., indicating the match should be a period.
Because no period exists in the string, the index result is -1.