Google Apps Script findtext searchpattern format?

Question

I am trying to pass in simple regex strings like

findText("/a/");

or

findText(/a/);

but it does not find anything. If I pass in only the text that works like this

findText("a");

How to pass regex strings in there?

Answer 1

It's not super clear in the documentation of findText, but the documentation for replaceText is more clear:

The search pattern is passed as a string, not a JavaScript regular expression object.

The example shown in the documentation of replaceText shows that your 3rd example is the correct one (where the search for a is shown as just the string, "a".

body.replaceText("^.*Apps ?Script.*$", "Apps Script");

Obviously, String.search() will work here as well, but if you're looking to manipulate the attributes of the text, rather than just the string contents, using the built-in javascript function might leave you hanging.