Difference between indexOf() and search() in JavaScript

This post is published to differentiate between the two search methods of JavaScript, which are:

indexOf() vs. search() in JavaScript

The only two differences between these two are:

The indexOf() method cannot perform a search against a regular expression, whereas search() method can
The search() method cannot take the second argument, which is the position argument, whereas the indexOf() method can. The position or startIndex argument is used when we need to start searching from a specified index instead of from start.

Both methods return the index of the first character of the specified value or substring. Otherwise, it returns -1 if the specified value does not exist in the specified string. For example:

HTML with JavaScript Code

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

   <p>----Using indexOf()----<br>
      The index of 'Fun' = <span id="mySpan1"></span></p>
   <p>----Using search()----<br>
      The index of 'Fun' = <span id="mySpan2"></span></p>

   <script>
      let x = "JavaScript is Fun. Is not it?";
      let y = x.indexOf("Fun");
      document.getElementById("mySpan1").innerHTML = y;

      let a = "JavaScript is Fun. Is not it?";
      let b = a.search("Fun");
      document.getElementById("mySpan2").innerHTML = b;
   </script>
   
</body>
</html>

Output

----Using indexOf()----
The index of 'Fun' =

----Using search()----
The index of 'Fun' =

When is indexOf() useful?

The indexOf() method is useful when we need to search for a value from a specified position. For example:

HTML with JavaScript Code

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

   <p id="myPara"></p>

   <script>
      let mystr = "Javascript is fun, is not it?";
      let pos = mystr.indexOf("is", 15);

      document.getElementById("myPara").innerHTML = pos;
   </script>
   
</body>
</html>

Output

This is the only scenario where the indexOf() method comes into play when talking about searching for the position of a specified value in a string. Otherwise, the search() method is prominent everywhere.

JavaScript Online Test

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