Question

I want to search an array to see if it contains a specific string, and then get the index of the result.

For example, if I had:

array[0] = "dogs";
array[1] = "cats";
array[2] = "oranges";

I want to be able to search for “oran” and get 2 back. Any idea on how to do this?

Answer 1

You can do something like this:

function findInArray(str:String):int {
    for(var i:int = 0; i < array.length; i++){
        if(array[i] == str){
            trace("found it at index: " + i);
            return i;
        }
    }
    return -1; //If not found
}

Then whenever you want to find something call it like:

findInArray("oranges"); // Returns 2

To search for a part of the word can pontentially return undesiderd results for bigger lists, but you can do it with the following:

function findInArrayPartially(str:String):int {
    for(var i:int = 0; i < array.length; i++){
        if(array[i].indexOf(str) > -1){
            trace("found it at index: " + i);
            return i;
        }
    }
    return -1; //If not found
}