Finding the nth occurrence of a character in a string in javascript

function nth_occurrence (string, char, nth) {
    var first_index = string.indexOf(char);
    var length_up_to_first_index = first_index + 1;

    if (nth == 1) {
        return first_index;
    } else {
        var string_after_first_occurrence = string.slice(length_up_to_first_index);
        var next_occurrence = nth_occurrence(string_after_first_occurrence, char, nth - 1);

        if (next_occurrence === -1) {
            return -1;
        } else {
            return length_up_to_first_index + next_occurrence;  
        }
    }
}

// Returns 16. The index of the third 'c' character.
nth_occurrence('aaaaacabkhjecdddchjke', 'c', 3);
// Returns -1. There is no third 'c' character.
nth_occurrence('aaaaacabkhjecdddhjke', 'c', 3);

You can do it easily by implementing a function using charAt(), like this:

function nth_ocurrence(str, needle, nth) {
  for (i=0;i<str.length;i++) {
    if (str.charAt(i) == needle) {
        if (!--nth) {
           return i;    
        }
    }
  }
  return false;
}

alert( nth_ocurrence('aaaaacabkhjecdddchjke', 'c', 3)  );//alerts 16

Thanks to CQQL for let me know what OP really wanted. I updated a bit my original function to achieve the new behaviour.