ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Working with strings
var str:String = "The more the merrier.";
// (This search is case-sensitive.)
trace(str.search("the")); // output: 9
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() method is 0, because the first character in the string is index position 0. The i flag is set in
the regular expression, so the search is not case-sensitive.
The search() method finds only one match and returns its starting index position, even if the g (global) flag is set in
the regular expression.
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 match() method works similarly. It searches for a matching substring. However, when you use the global flag in
a regular expression pattern, as in the following example, match() 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 results array is set to the following:
["bob@example.com","omar@example.org"]
For more information on regular expressions, see “Using regular expressions” on page 76.
Replacing matched substrings
You can use the replace() method to search for a specified pattern in a string and replace matches with the specified
replacement string, as the following example shows:
var str:String = "She sells seashells by the seashore.";
var pattern:RegExp = /sh/gi;
trace(str.replace(pattern, "sch")); //sche sells seaschells by the seaschore.
Note that in this example, the matched strings are not case-sensitive because the i (ignoreCase) flag is set in the
regular expression, and multiple matches are replaced because the g (global) flag is set. For more information, see
“Using regular expressions” on page 76.
You can include the following $ replacement codes in the replacement string. The replacement text shown in the
following table is inserted in place of the $ replacement code:
Last updated 6/6/2012
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