Question

I am working on a javascript code to find the nth occurrence of a character in a string. Using the indexOf() function we are able to get the first occurrence of the character. Now the challenge is to get the nth occurrence of the character. I was able to get the second third occurrence and so on using the code given below:

function myFunction() {
  var str = "abcdefabcddesadfasddsfsd.";

  var n = str.indexOf("d");
  document.write("First occurence " +n );

  var n1 = str.indexOf("d",parseInt(n+1));
  document.write("Second occurence " +n1 );

  var n2 = str.indexOf("d",parseInt(n1+1));
  document.write("Third occurence " +n2 );

  var n3 = str.indexOf("d",parseInt(n2+1));
  document.write("Fourth occurence " +n3);

  // and so on ...
}

The result is given below

First occurence 3 
Second occurence 9 
Third occurence 10 
Fourth occurence 14 
Fifth occurence 18 
Sixth occurence 19

I would like to generalize the script so that I am able to find the nth occurrence of the character as the above code requires us to repeat the script n times. Let me know if there is a better method or alternative to do the same. It would be nice if we just give the occurrence (at run time) to get the index of that character.

The following are some of my questions:

• How do we do it in JavaScript?
• Does any framework provide any functionality to do the same implementation in an easier way or what are the alternate methods to implement the same in other frameworks /languages?

Answer 1

function nth_occurrence (string, char, nth) {
    var first_index = string.indexOf(char);
    var length_up_to_first_index = first_index + 1;

    if (nth == 1) {
        return first_index;
    } else {
        var string_after_first_occurrence = string.slice(length_up_to_first_index);
        var next_occurrence = nth_occurrence(string_after_first_occurrence, char, nth - 1);

        if (next_occurrence === -1) {
            return -1;
        } else {
            return length_up_to_first_index + next_occurrence;  
        }
    }
}

// Returns 16. The index of the third 'c' character.
nth_occurrence('aaaaacabkhjecdddchjke', 'c', 3);
// Returns -1. There is no third 'c' character.
nth_occurrence('aaaaacabkhjecdddhjke', 'c', 3);