191

I am trying to find the indexes of all the instances of an element, say, "Nano", in a JavaScript array.

var Cars = ["Nano", "Volvo", "BMW", "Nano", "VW", "Nano"];

I tried jQuery.inArray, or similarly, .indexOf(), but it only gave the index of the last instance of the element, i.e. 5 in this case.

How do I get it for all instances?

1
  • Cars.map((v, i) => v === "Nano" ? i : -1).filter(v => v > -1); Commented Sep 5 at 9:20

18 Answers 18

177

The .indexOf() method has an optional second parameter that specifies the index to start searching from, so you can call it in a loop to find all instances of a particular value:

function getAllIndexes(arr, val) {
    var indexes = [], i = -1;
    while ((i = arr.indexOf(val, i+1)) != -1){
        indexes.push(i);
    }
    return indexes;
}

var indexes = getAllIndexes(Cars, "Nano");

You don't really make it clear how you want to use the indexes, so my function returns them as an array (or returns an empty array if the value isn't found), but you could do something else with the individual index values inside the loop.

UPDATE: As per VisioN's comment, a simple for loop would get the same job done more efficiently, and it is easier to understand and therefore easier to maintain:

function getAllIndexes(arr, val) {
    var indexes = [], i;
    for(i = 0; i < arr.length; i++)
        if (arr[i] === val)
            indexes.push(i);
    return indexes;
}
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14 Comments

It doesn't seem to be the faster alternative to a single for loop with index array populating.
@VisioN - Yes, a plain for loop iterating over the array would be simpler too, but since the OP mentioned trying to use .indexOf() I wanted to show that it can do the job. (I guess I figured the OP could figure out how to do it with a for loop.) Of course there are other ways to do it, e.g., Cars.reduce(function(a, v, i) { if (v==="Nano") a.push(i); return a; }, []);
@4castle - Ha. No, I'm not. "Indices" and "indexes" are both correct, and I tend to alternate between the two. I hadn't ever thought of that as a regional dialect thing. Interesting.
@IgorFomenko - Thanks for the suggestion. It's not really a "calculation", it's just a property lookup, but still actually I do often code loops as per your suggestion, but I don't usually do it in StackOverflow answers if it's not directly relevant to the question. How sure are you that the JS compiler won't do that optimisation automatically behind the scenes?
The indexOf recommendation right at the top of the thread in this post is fundamentally inefficient and should be removed. indexOf is simply the wrong tool for the job. Use the bottom version or something more idiomatic in one of the answers below this. Regarding "caching" array.length--this is a silly micro-optimization that harms readability and introduces potentially subtle and difficult-to-find bugs with virtually no performance benefit. array.length is a hashtable lookup, not strlen in C that traverses the whole structure item by item.
|
138

Another alternative solution is to use Array.prototype.reduce():

["Nano","Volvo","BMW","Nano","VW","Nano"].reduce(function(a, e, i) {
    if (e === 'Nano')
        a.push(i);
    return a;
}, []);   // [0, 3, 5]

N.B.: Check the browser compatibility for reduce method and use polyfill if required.

7 Comments

+1. Funny coincidence: I just edited my reply to your comment under my answer to suggest exactly this solution, then I refresh and see you'd already coded the same thing with only one variable name different.
array.reduce((a, e, i) => (e === value) ? a.concat(i) : a, [])
I googled contat is slower than push, therefore I stick with the answer.
Yes, please don't use concat here--you're allocating a whole new array object on every callback and tossing the previous object into the garbage collector without any commensurate benefit in readability.
The @Darkproduct solution will not work. The push method return a number (the length of the array) and not the array itself. So it will raise an error. See : developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/…
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95

Another approach using Array.prototype.map() and Array.prototype.filter():

var indices = array.map((e, i) => e === value ? i : '').filter(String)

12 Comments

great, it works. can you explain what is the role of the filter(String)
@Muthu map(…) checks on each iteration for the equality of e and value. When they match the index is returned, otherwise an empty string. To get rid of those falsy values, filter(String) makes sure that the result only contains values that are type of string and NOT empty. filter(String) could also be written as: filter(e => e !== '')
...or: String(thing) coerces anything to a string. Array#filter returns an array of all the values for which the condition is truthy. Because empty strings are falsy, those are NOT included in the array.
I would be confused if I saw this in a project. It reads like "Filter to strings", meaning only keep if it's a string. And then the resulting array would be indexes as strings, not numbers.
Don't use filter(Number) @Friedrich--СлаваУкраїні because 0 is equal to false, better to use filter(String) because 0 is a type of string.
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39

You can write a simple readable solution to this by using both map and filter:

const nanoIndexes = Cars
  .map((car, i) => car === 'Nano' ? i : -1)
  .filter(index => index !== -1);

EDIT: If you don't need to support IE/Edge (or are transpiling your code), ES2019 gave us flatMap, which lets you do this in a simple one-liner:

const nanoIndexes = Cars.flatMap((car, i) => car === 'Nano' ? i : []);

3 Comments

I liked this answer. But how about: changing to this: .map((car, i) => car === 'Nano' ? i : null).filter(i => i);
Either works. The problem with using a non-number like null is it will make typing it in TypeScript much more annoying. If you are just using JavaScript, null works fine.
I like this because I find the .reduce solution more difficult to parse than the solution using map and filter. When I looked at this, I immediately know what's happening.
39

More simple way with es6 style.

const indexOfAll = (arr, val) => arr.reduce((acc, el, i) => (el === val ? [...acc, i] : acc), []);


//Examples:
var cars = ["Nano", "Volvo", "BMW", "Nano", "VW", "Nano"];
indexOfAll(cars, "Nano"); //[0, 3, 5]
indexOfAll([1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3], 1); // [0,3]
indexOfAll([1, 2, 3], 4); // []

1 Comment

Worth noting that since spread has linear time complexity and reduce has linear time complexity, this solution is a nested loop with O(n^2) time complexity. That won't matter if your array of cars is always short, but if you get up to thousands of cars, this solution will be noticeably slower than the others presented here.
14

I just want to update with another easy method.

You can also use forEach method.

var Cars = ["Nano", "Volvo", "BMW", "Nano", "VW", "Nano"];

var result = [];

Cars.forEach((car, index) => car === 'Nano' ? result.push(index) : null)

Comments

6

Note: MDN gives a method using a while loop:

var indices = [];
var array = ['a', 'b', 'a', 'c', 'a', 'd'];
var element = 'a';
var idx = array.indexOf(element);
while (idx != -1) {
  indices.push(idx);
  idx = array.indexOf(element, idx + 1);
}

I wouldn't say it's any better than other answers. Just interesting.

Comments

5
const indexes = cars
    .map((car, i) => car === "Nano" ? i : null)
    .filter(i => i !== null)

3 Comments

Indexes are zero-based, so this will fail if the first car is a Nano.
Oh look, you have a solution and mine looks like just like it. I should have seen yours before I spent time writing mine. There were just so many sprawling for loops I thought, "I could make my own answer in 2 seconds."
Yeah. These are mostly way over-complicated. Nice correction.
3

Also, findIndex() will be useful:

var cars = ['Nano', 'Volvo', 'BMW', 'Nano', 'VW', 'Nano'];

const indexes = [];
const searchedItem = 'NaNo';

cars.findIndex((value, index) => {
  if (value.toLowerCase() === searchedItem.toLowerCase()) {
    indexes.push(index);
  }
});

console.log(indexes); //[ 0, 3, 5 ]

Bonus:

This custom solution using Object.entries() and forEach()

var cars = ['Nano', 'Volvo', 'BMW', 'Nano', 'VW', 'Nano'];

const indexes = [];
const searchableItem = 'Nano';

Object.entries(cars).forEach((item, index) => {
  if (item[1].toLowerCase() === searchableItem.toLowerCase())
    indexes.push(index);
});

console.log(indexes);

Note: I did not run run all tests

Comments

2

This worked for me:

let array1 = [5, 12, 8, 130, 44, 12, 45, 12, 56];
let numToFind = 12
let indexesOf12 = [] // the number whose occurrence in the array we want to find

array1.forEach(function(elem, index, array) {
    if (elem === numToFind) {indexesOf12.push(index)}
    return indexesOf12
})

console.log(indexesOf12) // outputs [1, 5, 7]

Comments

1

Just to share another method, you can use Function Generators to achieve the result as well:

function findAllIndexOf(target, needle) {
  return [].concat(...(function*(){
    for (var i = 0; i < target.length; i++) if (target[i] === needle) yield [i];
  })());
}

var target = "hellooooo";
var target2 = ['w','o',1,3,'l','o'];

console.log(findAllIndexOf(target, 'o'));
console.log(findAllIndexOf(target2, 'o'));

Comments

1
["a", "b", "a", "b"]
   .map((val, index) => ({ val, index }))
   .filter(({val, index}) => val === "a")
   .map(({val, index}) => index)

=> [0, 2]

1 Comment

Please write an essential explanation or inline comments for the code. BTW, your solution did work but it contains 3 iterations...
1

You can use Polyfill

if (!Array.prototype.filterIndex) 
{
    Array.prototype.filterIndex = function (func, thisArg) {

        'use strict';
        if (!((typeof func === 'Function' || typeof func === 'function') && this))
            throw new TypeError();

        let len = this.length >>> 0,
            res = new Array(len), // preallocate array
            t = this, c = 0, i = -1;

        let kValue;
        if (thisArg === undefined) {
            while (++i !== len) {
                // checks to see if the key was set
                if (i in this) {
                    kValue = t[i]; // in case t is changed in callback
                    if (func(t[i], i, t)) {
                        res[c++] = i;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        else {
            while (++i !== len) {
                // checks to see if the key was set
                if (i in this) {
                    kValue = t[i];
                    if (func.call(thisArg, t[i], i, t)) {
                        res[c++] = i;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        res.length = c; // shrink down array to proper size
        return res;
    };
}

Use it like this:

[2,23,1,2,3,4,52,2].filterIndex(element => element === 2)

result: [0, 3, 7]

Comments

0

findIndex retrieves only the first index which matches callback output. You can implement your own findIndexes by extending Array , then casting your arrays to the new structure .

class EnhancedArray extends Array {
  findIndexes(where) {
    return this.reduce((a, e, i) => (where(e, i) ? a.concat(i) : a), []);
  }
}
   /*----Working with simple data structure (array of numbers) ---*/

//existing array
let myArray = [1, 3, 5, 5, 4, 5];

//cast it :
myArray = new EnhancedArray(...myArray);

//run
console.log(
   myArray.findIndexes((e) => e===5)
)
/*----Working with Array of complex items structure-*/

let arr = [{name: 'Ahmed'}, {name: 'Rami'}, {name: 'Abdennour'}];

arr= new EnhancedArray(...arr);


console.log(
  arr.findIndexes((o) => o.name.startsWith('A'))
)

Comments

0

We can use Stack and push "i" into the stack every time we encounter the condition "arr[i]==value"

Check this:

static void getindex(int arr[], int value)
{
    Stack<Integer>st= new Stack<Integer>();
    int n= arr.length;
    for(int i=n-1; i>=0 ;i--)
    {
        if(arr[i]==value)
        {
            st.push(i);
        }
    }   
    while(!st.isEmpty())
    {
        System.out.println(st.peek()+" ");
        st.pop(); 
    }
}

1 Comment

The question is tagged with javascript, whilst your answer is Java I believe?
0

When both parameter passed as array


    function getIndexes(arr, val) {
        var indexes = [], i;
        for(i = 0; i < arr.length; i++){
    for(j =0; j< val.length; j++) {
     if (arr[i] === val[j])
                indexes.push(i);
    }
    }    
        return indexes;
    }

Comments

0

If you need all matches from a string and not from an array:

const sourceStr = 'Nano, Volvo, BMW, Nano, VW, Nano';
const searchStr = 'Nano';
const indexes = [...sourceStr.matchAll(new RegExp(searchStr, 'gi'))].map(a => a.index);
console.log(indexes); // [0, 18, 28]

source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/58828841/1248177

1 Comment

btw, it's an array not a string.
0

You could get all indices as Iterator and filter with reference to the given array.

const
    cars = ["Nano", "Volvo", "BMW", "Nano", "VW", "Nano"],
    search = 'Nano',
    indices = [...cars.keys().filter(i => cars[i] === search)];

console.log(indices);

Comments

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