getting document elements by regular expressions

[MiniMini]

Hi All,

I need to fetch a document-element but i do not know the full Id of the element.
I only know part of the id of the element. Is it possible to get something like "Give me the element which has id starting with XXXXX".

Say we have 3 elements
1)<input type="text" id="My_name_is_ABC value="textboxval">
2)<input type="text" id="My_name_is_BEF value="textboxval">
3)<input type="text" id="My_name_is_YEX value="textboxval">

now , in my script i have only "My_name_is_A" and i want to get a reference of an object whose id starts with "My_name_is_A".
Is it possible to do so ?
Can i use something like
var regularExp = new RegExp("My_name_is_A");
document.getElementById(regularExp);

Of course the above does not work :(

[mrhoo]

id="My_name_is_ABC value="textboxval">

It will never work unless you close the quotes for the id value.

id="My_name_is_ABC" value="textboxval">

[Logician]

Hi All,

I need to fetch a document-element but i do not know the full Id of the element.
I only know part of the id of the element. Is it possible to get something like "Give me the element which has id starting with XXXXX".

There could be more than one element with an id starting with that prefix. This will return a reference to the first one found:

function getFirstElementWithIDPrefix( prefix )
{
 var allElems=document.getElementsByTagName('*');
 
 for( var i=0; i<allElems.length && allElems[i].id.indexOf(prefix); i++)
 ;
 
 return (i==allElems.length) ? null : allElems[i];
}