What is the difference between indexOf() and search()?

Question

Being fairly new to JavaScript, I\'m unable to discern when to use each of these.

Can anyone help clarify this for me?

Answer 1

indexOf() and search()

• common in both

  i) return the first occurrence of searched value

  ii) return -1 if no match found

  let str='Book is booked for delivery'
  str.indexOf('b')   // returns position 8
  str.search('b')    // returns position 8 
  

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• special in indexOf()

  i) you can give starting search position as a second argument

  str.indexOf('k')   // 3
  str.indexOf('k',4) // 11 (it start search from 4th position) 
  

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• special in search()

search value can be regular expression

str.search('book') // 8
str.search(/book/i)  // 0   ( /i =case-insensitive   (Book == book)

reference