How to get the nth occurrence in a string?

I would like to get the starting position of the 2nd occurrence of ABC with something like this:

var string = "XYZ 123 ABC 456 ABC 789 ABC";
getPosition(string, 'ABC', 2) // --> 16

How would you do it?

Solution 1:

const string = "XYZ 123 ABC 456 ABC 789 ABC";

function getPosition(string, subString, index) {
  return string.split(subString, index).join(subString).length;
}

console.log(
  getPosition(string, 'ABC', 2) // --> 16
)

Solution 2:

You can also use the string indexOf without creating any arrays.

The second parameter is the index to start looking for the next match.

function nthIndex(str, pat, n){
    var L= str.length, i= -1;
    while(n-- && i++<L){
        i= str.indexOf(pat, i);
        if (i < 0) break;
    }
    return i;
}

var s= "XYZ 123 ABC 456 ABC 789 ABC";

nthIndex(s,'ABC',3)

/*  returned value: (Number)
24
*/

Solution 3:

Working off of kennebec's answer, I created a prototype function which will return -1 if the nth occurence is not found rather than 0.

String.prototype.nthIndexOf = function(pattern, n) {
    var i = -1;

    while (n-- && i++ < this.length) {
        i = this.indexOf(pattern, i);
        if (i < 0) break;
    }

    return i;
}

Solution 4:

Because recursion is always the answer.

function getPosition(input, search, nth, curr, cnt) {
    curr = curr || 0;
    cnt = cnt || 0;
    var index = input.indexOf(search);
    if (curr === nth) {
        if (~index) {
            return cnt;
        }
        else {
            return -1;
        }
    }
    else {
        if (~index) {
            return getPosition(input.slice(index + search.length),
              search,
              nth,
              ++curr,
              cnt + index + search.length);
        }
        else {
            return -1;
        }
    }
}

Solution 5:

Here's my solution, which just iterates over the string until n matches have been found:

String.prototype.nthIndexOf = function(searchElement, n, fromElement) {
    n = n || 0;
    fromElement = fromElement || 0;
    while (n > 0) {
        fromElement = this.indexOf(searchElement, fromElement);
        if (fromElement < 0) {
            return -1;
        }
        --n;
        ++fromElement;
    }
    return fromElement - 1;
};

var string = "XYZ 123 ABC 456 ABC 789 ABC";
console.log(string.nthIndexOf('ABC', 2));

>> 16