endsWith in JavaScript

UPDATE (Nov 24th, 2015):

This answer is originally posted in the year 2010 (SIX years back.) so please take note of these insightful comments:

  • Shauna -

Update for Googlers - Looks like ECMA6 adds this function. The MDN article also shows a polyfill. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/endsWith

  • T.J. Crowder -

Creating substrings isn't expensive on modern browsers; it may well have been in 2010 when this answer was posted. These days, the simple this.substr(-suffix.length) === suffix approach is fastest on Chrome, the same on IE11 as indexOf, and only 4% slower (fergetaboutit territory) on Firefox: https://jsben.ch/OJzlM And faster across the board when the result is false: jsperf.com/endswith-stackoverflow-when-false Of course, with ES6 adding endsWith, the point is moot. :-)

ORIGINAL ANSWER:

I know this is a year old question... but I need this too and I need it to work cross-browser so... combining everyone's answer and comments and simplifying it a bit:

String.prototype.endsWith = function(suffix) {
    return this.indexOf(suffix, this.length - suffix.length) !== -1;
};
  • Doesn't create a substring
  • Uses native indexOf function for fastest results
  • Skip unnecessary comparisons using the second parameter of indexOf to skip ahead
  • Works in Internet Explorer
  • NO Regex complications

Also, if you don't like stuffing things in native data structure's prototypes, here's a standalone version:

function endsWith(str, suffix) {
    return str.indexOf(suffix, str.length - suffix.length) !== -1;
}

EDIT: As noted by @hamish in the comments, if you want to err on the safe side and check if an implementation has already been provided, you can just adds a typeof check like so:

if (typeof String.prototype.endsWith !== 'function') {
    String.prototype.endsWith = function(suffix) {
        return this.indexOf(suffix, this.length - suffix.length) !== -1;
    };
}

  1. Unfortunately not.
  2. if( "mystring#".substr(-1) === "#" ) {}

/#$/.test(str)

will work on all browsers, doesn't require monkey patching String, and doesn't require scanning the entire string as lastIndexOf does when there is no match.

If you want to match a constant string that might contain regular expression special characters, such as '$', then you can use the following:

function makeSuffixRegExp(suffix, caseInsensitive) {
  return new RegExp(
      String(suffix).replace(/[$%()*+.?\[\\\]{|}]/g, "\\$&") + "$",
      caseInsensitive ? "i" : "");
}

and then you can use it like this

makeSuffixRegExp("a[complicated]*suffix*").test(str)

Tags:

Javascript

String

Ends With

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