Preserved Topic: IndexOf problem (Page 1 of 1)

I'm having problems returning the index of a letter in a string correctly.

basically the script does 3 things:

1. has a list of letters from a - z in an array.

2. has a message written in a string.

3. returns the index in letters array of a letter in the message string, assigning it to a variable as a number.

letters = new Array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z',' ');



message = "a sentence of sorts";



letter = message.substr(0,1);

lettersIndex = letters.join().indexOf(letter);

The lettersIndex contains a nul value for some reason where it should return 0

what i would do is this:
Create a string of all the chars and use indexOf on the letter you want.

Dark

John H, I have tested the code from above and it worked fine. BUT, it won't do what you want; join() function will create string from array elements, but they will be separated by commas and using indeOf() on that string will return number that won't corespond to the actual index in array. You have to strip all commas before using indexOf() function...
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- ;

letters = new Array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z',' ');
message = "a sentence of sorts";
letter = message.charAt(2);
lettersIndex = letters.join().replace(/,/g, "").indexOf(letter);

// -->
</SCRIPT>

You could just use join with an empty string seperator...
The default value for the seperator is a comma, but you can override it i.e. -

lettersIndex = letters.join('').indexOf(letter);

That way you'll get the string as you want.

stinx.

I went with the string idea (letters = "abcd...") and it's all sorted out now.