218432 - lastIndex problem after String.search()

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core :: JavaScript Engine, defect)

Description

[coolcat]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

myString = new String("Go to DevGuru.com")
rExp = /devguru.com/gi;
results = myString.search(rExp)
document.write(results + " lastindex " + rExp.lastIndex);

Script gives 17 in IE and 0 in Mozilla for the lastIndex. Also problemes with
lastindex on other pages.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
lastindex 17

Comment 1

[Phil Schwartau]

Actually, Mozilla is correct here, not IE. Here is the specification of
the .search() method from the spec for the JavaScript language. This 
spec is available at http://www.mozilla.org/js/language/E262-3.pdf :

---
15.5.4.12 String.prototype.search (regexp)
If regexp is not an object whose [[Class]] property is "RegExp",
it is replaced with the result of the expression new RegExp(regexp).
Let string denote the result of converting the this value to a string.

The value string is searched from its beginning for an occurrence of
the regular expression pattern regexp. The result is a number indicating
the offset within the string where the pattern matched, or –1 if there
was no match.

NOTE This method ignores the lastIndex and global properties of regexp.
The lastIndex property of regexp is left unchanged.

NOTE The search function is intentionally generic; it does not require
that its this value be a String object. Therefore, it can be transferred
to other kinds of objects for use as a method.
---


Note the spec specifically states the method is not to change |lastIndex|.

Comment 2

[Phil Schwartau]

Marking Verified.

[e-mail]: thank you for this report; you raise a valid point.
It's not good when different browsers perform differently on the same code.

That is why we hope all browsers will follow the specs -

Comment 3

[Phil Schwartau]

.