How to check if a string is a substring of any element in an array

Question

I have an array

var months = ["January", "February", "March", "April", \
    "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", \
    "November", "December"];

I have strings like "Nov", "October", "Jun", "June", "Sept", "Sep" etc. The point is, the string can be a substring of one of the months.

What is the best way to compare the string to be a substring of the array elements? How do I find out the index of the month?

I am looking at javascript/jQuery.

I know I can just loop through the array checking against each element using search and break when found. I want something better.

Answer 1

var month_index = function(target) {
        target = target.toLocaleLowerCase();
        return jQuery.inArray(true, jQuery.map(months, function(s) {
            return s.toLocaleLowerCase().indexOf(target) > -1;
        }))
    };

var index_of_october = month_index("oct");

Answer 2

var  substr = 'nov', months = ["december", "november", "feb"];

var index = months.indexOf( months.filter(function(v){ return v.indexOf(substr) >= 0;})[0]);
alert(index)

http://jsfiddle.net/KeMe9/

Answer 3

Put your array items in lower case

var txt = "Sep";
var found = false;
txt = txt.toLowerCase();
  for (var i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
    if (months[i].indexOf(txt) > -1) {
        found = true;
        break;
  }
}