How to Check if a JavaScript String Begins or Ends With a String

April 7, 2022 · 275 words · ~2 minutes to read

To check if a JavaScript string begins with a particular string, use the startsWith method.

const testString = "Foobar";

// evaluates to true
testString.startsWith("Foo");

// evaluates to false
testString.startsWith("bar");

// evaluates to false
testString.startsWith("Foobarbaz");

// evaluates to false (the check is case-sensitive)
testString.startsWith("foo");

Similarly, to check if a JavaScript string ends with a particular string, use the endsWith method.

const testString = "Foobar";

// evaluates to true
testString.endsWith("bar");

// evaluates to false
testString.endsWith("baz");

// evaluates to false (the check is case-sensitive)
testString.startsWith("BAR");

Advanced Usage

The startsWith method takes an optional starting index as a second parameter. The index is zero-based, so if you want to start the check at the fourth character in the string, you would pass in a value of 3.

const testString = "foobar";

// evaluates to false
testString.startsWith("bar");
// this is equivalent
testString.startsWith("bar", 0);

// evaluates to true
testString.startsWith("bar", 3);

The endsWith method takes an optional length as a second parameter. This limits the length of the string that you are searching.

const testString = "foobar";

// evaluates to false
testString.endsWith("oo");

// evaluates to true because it's equivalent to "foo".endsWith("oo")
testString.endsWith("oo", 3);

Alternatives

startsWith and endsWith were part of the ECMAScript 2015 specification, so all modern browsers support the methods. If you can’t use them for whatever reason, such as needing to support Internet Explorer, one option is to use a regex.

To replicate startsWith, you can use the ^ character to match the beginning of the input.

const testString = "foobar";

// evaluates to true
/^foo/.test(testString);

To replicate endsWith, you can use the $ character to match the end of the input.

const testString = "foobar";

// evaluates to true
/bar$/.test(testString);

Alternatively, you can use lastIndexOf and indexOf to replicate the methods, as detailed here.