Adobe FLEX 2-PROGRAMMING ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 Manual page 217

Finding matching substrings
The method returns the index position of the first substring that matches a given
search()
pattern, as shown in this example:
var str:String = "The more the merrier.";
trace(str.search("the"));
// output: 9
// (This search is case-sensitive.)
You can also use regular expressions to define the pattern to match, as this example shows:
var pattern:RegExp = /the/i;
var str:String = "The more the merrier.";
trace(str.search(pattern)); // 0
The output of the
trace()
position 0. The flag is set in the regular expression, so the search is not case-sensitive.
i
The method finds only one match and returns its starting index position, even if
search()
the (global) flag is set in the regular expression.
g
The following example shows a more intricate regular expression, one that matches a string in
double quotation marks:
var pattern:RegExp = /"[^"]*"/;
var str:String = "The \"more\" the merrier.";
trace(str.search(pattern));
// output: 4
str = "The \"more the merrier.";
trace(str.search(pattern));
// output: -1
// (Indicates no match, since there is no closing double quotation mark.)
The method works similarly. It searches for a matching substring. However, when
match()
you use the global flag in a regular expression pattern, as in the following example,
returns an array of matching substrings:
var str:String = "bob@example.com, omar@example.org";
var pattern:RegExp = /\w*@\w*\.[org|com]+/g;
var results:Array = str.match(pattern);
The array is set to the following:
results
["bob@example.com","omar@example.org"]
For more information on regular expressions, see
on page 285.
method is 0, because the first character in the string is index
Chapter 10, "Using Regular Expressions,"
Finding substrings and patterns in strings
match()
217