Find if value is contained in comma separated values in JS

Question

Given these two strings:

var first = 'dog,cat,lion';
var second = 'cat';

How would I do it to know if the second var is any of the words (the ones that are separated by commas) in the first vars?

Answer 1

You can use Array.indexOf:

if( first.split(',').indexOf(second) > -1 ) {
   // found
}

Need IE8- support? Use a shim: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/indexOf

Answer 2

This would work:

if( first.match(new RegExp("(?:^|,)"+second+"(?:,|$)"))) {
    // it's there
}