sorting string values

[awebb]

I have a menu whose values contain strings of mixed letters and numbers (necessary for the database).
When a user selects an option I want a text box to display a value dependent on part of the string (its the name of a month).
Can you extract just the name of the month from the string?
And if you can is it easily done?

[Khalid Ali]

since you did not give an example of the string that needs to be parsed..
I can only suggest you toread up on these functions

substring()
indexOf()
chartAt()

http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2000/javascript/1.5/reference/string.html#1193137

[awebb]

Sorry I missed out an example.
They are all dates (but as strings, not dates, if you see what I mean) in the format "Day, Month, 00, 0000".
I just want to be able to populate a text box with a value based on the month bit.
The <option> value and the text are the same format.

[Khalid Ali]

if the format you mentioned is uniform...then here is how you can get the month out of the string

var temp = "Monday, June, 00, 2003"
var month=(temp.split(","))[1]
alert(month)

[SlankenOgen]

Create a String array of months *in lower case*-

var MonthArray = new Array("january","february","march"...);
var lgn = MonthArray.length;
var str = "xxxFebruaryzzzzzz";
var i;

function testForMatch()
{

str = str.toLowerCase();

for(i = 0; i < lgn; i++)
{
if(str.match(MonthArray[i]))
{
window.alert(MonthArray[i]);
return;
}
}
}


~mgb

[awebb]

Thanks for the link, very useful.
It looks like the string.split() method might work well as each part of the string is already separated by commas.
Back to the books!

[awebb]

Thanks to both of you.

[Khalid Ali]

You are welcome...
Yep ..split is prety handy function it creates an array of string in relation to the splitting parameter.

[SlankenOgen]

You're welcome - but watch out for case Sensitivity!

~mgb