How to dinamically change the string in a find statement?

[Yves-Alain NICOLLET]

I have a script that opens a small window containing a button which
when clicked performs a find to the next occurence of a string. It
works well when the string is made of only one word or of consecutive
words.
Now I want it to find the next occurence of one of the words contained
in a list, ie. I want to dynamically change the string to find.
I failed to use a regular expression instead of a string in the find
statement.
Any idea of how I can do that?
Thanks.

[Yves-Alain NICOLLET]

Yv************* ****@bull.net (Yves-Alain NICOLLET) wrote in message news:<72******* *************** ****@posting.go ogle.com>...

I have a script that opens a small window containing a button which
when clicked performs a find to the next occurence of a string. It
works well when the string is made of only one word or of consecutive
words.
Now I want it to find the next occurence of one of the words contained
in a list, ie. I want to dynamically change the string to find.
I failed to use a regular expression instead of a string in the find
statement.
Any idea of how I can do that?
Thanks.

To make myself clearer, is there a way to say:

find(a_word OR another_word OR yet_another_wor d OR etc) ?

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Yves-Alain NICOLLET wrote:

Yv************* ****@bull.net (Yves-Alain NICOLLET) wrote in message
news:<72******* *************** ****@posting.go ogle.com>...

Please do not write attribution novels.

I have a script that opens a small window containing a button
Note the security restrictions for the window size:

http://devedge.netscap e.com/manuals/2000/javascript/1.3/reference/window.html#120 2731>
[...] Now I want it to find the next occurence of one of
the words contained in a list, ie. I want to dynamically change the
string to find. I failed to use a regular expression instead of a
string in the find statement. Any idea of how I can do that? Thanks.

To make myself clearer, is there a way to say:

find(a_word OR another_word OR yet_another_wor d OR etc) ?

Depends. There is the proprietary window.find() method which
returns `true' if unsuccessful, `false' otherwise. So you can
do consecutive searches:

function findWords()
{
var t;
if ((t = typeof window.find) == "function"
|| (t == object && window.find != null))
{
for (var i = 0, len = arguments.lengt h; i < len; i++)
{
var s = arguments[i];
if (window.find(s) )
{
return true; // or s if you like
}
}
}

return false; // no match
}

if (!findWords("a_ word", "another_wo rd", "yet_another_wo rd", "etc"))
{
alert("No match for either"
+ "'a_word', 'another_word', 'yet_another_wo rd' or 'etc'");
}

If you want two or more words to be matched and to be selected at
the same time, you need to parse the documents content. Dirty
proprietary quickhack:

document.body.i nnerHTML.replac e(
/(a_word|another _word|yet_anoth er_word|etc)/g,
'<span style="backgrou nd-color:yellow; color:black">$1 </span>');
HTH

PointedEars

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Thomas 'Ingrid' Lahn wrote:

[...] There is the proprietary window.find() method which
returns `true' if unsuccessful, `false' otherwise. [...]

returns `true' if successful, `false' otherwise. [...]
PointedEars

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Thomas 'Ingrid' Lahn wrote:

If you want two or more words to be matched and to be selected at
the same time, you need to parse the documents content. Dirty
proprietary quickhack:

document.body.i nnerHTML.replac e(
/(a_word|another _word|yet_anoth er_word|etc)/g,
'<span style="backgrou nd-color:yellow; color:black">$1 </span>');

This changes nothing really and "must be" "of course"[1]

document.body.i nnerHTML = document.body.i nnerHTML.replac e(
/(a_word|another _word|yet_anoth er_word|etc)/g,
'<span style="backgrou nd-color:yellow; color:black">$1 </span>');
PointedEars
___________
[1] Note it is still an evil quickhack.