How to check if a string "StartsWith" another string?

You can use ECMAScript 6's String.prototype.startsWith() method. It's supported in all major browsers. However, if you want to use it in a browser that is unsupported you'll want to use a shim/polyfill to add it on those browsers. Creating an implementation that complies with all the details laid out in the spec is a little complicated. If you want a faithful shim, use either:

• Matthias Bynens's String.prototype.startsWith shim, or
• The es6-shim, which shims as much of the ES6 spec as possible, including String.prototype.startsWith.

Once you've shimmed the method (or if you're only supporting browsers and JavaScript engines that already have it), you can use it like this:

console.log("Hello World!".startsWith("He")); // true

var haystack = "Hello world";
var prefix = 'orl';
console.log(haystack.startsWith(prefix)); // false

Another alternative with .lastIndexOf:

haystack.lastIndexOf(needle) === 0

This looks backwards through haystack for an occurrence of needle starting from index string length of haystack back to zero. In other words, it only checks if haystack starts with needle. lastIndexOf provides a second optional parameter 'fromIndex'. If given, the backwards search starts at this given index position and traverses back to index zero. But we must not specify any other fromIndex than the very last index, otherwise the search might overlook something.

In principle, this should have performance advantages over some other approaches:

• It doesn't search the entire haystack.
• It doesn't create a new temporary string and then immediately discard it.

data.substring(0, input.length) === input

Without a helper function, just using regex's .test method:

/^He/.test('Hello world')

To do this with a dynamic string rather than a hardcoded one (assuming that the string will not contain any regexp control characters):

new RegExp('^' + needle).test(haystack)

You should check out Is there a RegExp.escape function in Javascript? if the possibility exists that regexp control characters appear in the string.

Here is a minor improvement to CMS's solution:

if(!String.prototype.startsWith){
    String.prototype.startsWith = function (str) {
        return !this.indexOf(str);
    }
}

"Hello World!".startsWith("He"); // true

 var data = "Hello world";
 var input = 'He';
 data.startsWith(input); // true

Checking whether the function already exists in case a future browser implements it in native code or if it is implemented by another library. For example, the Prototype Library implements this function already.

Using ! is slightly faster and more concise than === 0 though not as readable.

2019. The question is a bit old, but I wanted to write this answer to show you some benchmarks I made based on all the answers provided here and the jsperf shared by Jim Buck.

I basically needed a fast way to find if a long needle is within a long haystack and they are very similar except for the last characters.

Here's the code I have written which for each function (splice, substring, startsWith, etc.) tests both when they return false and true against a haystack string (nestedString) of 1.000.0001 characters and a falsy or truthy needle string of 1.000.000 chars (testParentStringFalse and testParentStringTrue, respectively):

// nestedString is made of 1.000.001 '1' repeated characters.
var nestedString = '...'

// testParentStringFalse is made of 1.000.000 characters,
// all characters are repeated '1', but the last one is '2',
// so for this string the test should return false.
var testParentStringFalse = '...'

// testParentStringTrue is made of 1.000.000 '1' repeated characters,
// so for this string the test should return true.
var testParentStringTrue = '...'

// You can make these very long strings by running the following bash command
// and edit each one as needed in your editor
// (NOTE: on OS X, `pbcopy` copies the string to the clipboard buffer,
//        on Linux, you would probably need to replace it with `xclip`):
// 
//     printf '1%.0s' {1..1000000} | pbcopy
// 

function testString() {
    let dateStart
    let dateEnd
    let avg
    let count = 100000
    const falseResults = []
    const trueResults = []

    /* slice */
    console.log('========> slice')
    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.slice(0, testParentStringFalse.length) === testParentStringFalse
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    falseResults[falseResults.length] = {
        label: 'slice',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() slice = false`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')

    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.slice(0, testParentStringTrue.length) === testParentStringTrue
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    trueResults[trueResults.length] = {
        label: 'slice',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() slice = true`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')
    console.log('<======== slice')
    console.log('')
    /* slice END */

    /* lastIndexOf */
    console.log('========> lastIndexOf')
    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.lastIndexOf(testParentStringFalse, 0) === 0
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    falseResults[falseResults.length] = {
        label: 'lastIndexOf',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() lastIndexOf = false`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')

    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.lastIndexOf(testParentStringTrue, 0) === 0
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    trueResults[trueResults.length] = {
        label: 'lastIndexOf',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() lastIndexOf = true`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')
    console.log('<======== lastIndexOf')
    console.log('')
    /* lastIndexOf END */

    /* indexOf */
    console.log('========> indexOf')
    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.indexOf(testParentStringFalse) === 0
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    falseResults[falseResults.length] = {
        label: 'indexOf',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() indexOf = false`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')

    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.indexOf(testParentStringTrue) === 0
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    trueResults[trueResults.length] = {
        label: 'indexOf',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() indexOf = true`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')
    console.log('<======== indexOf')
    console.log('')
    /* indexOf END */

    /* substring */
    console.log('========> substring')
    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.substring(0, testParentStringFalse.length) === testParentStringFalse
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    falseResults[falseResults.length] = {
        label: 'substring',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() substring = false`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')

    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.substring(0, testParentStringTrue.length) === testParentStringTrue
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    trueResults[trueResults.length] = {
        label: 'substring',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() substring = true`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')
    console.log('<======== substring')
    console.log('')
    /* substring END */

    /* startsWith */
    console.log('========> startsWith')
    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.startsWith(testParentStringFalse)
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    falseResults[falseResults.length] = {
        label: 'startsWith',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() startsWith = false`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')

    dateStart = +new Date()
    var res
    for (let j = 0; j < count; j++) {
        res = nestedString.startsWith(testParentStringTrue)
    }
    dateEnd = +new Date()
    avg = (dateEnd - dateStart)/count
    trueResults[trueResults.length] = {
        label: 'startsWith',
        avg
    }
    console.log(`testString() startsWith = true`, res, 'avg: ' + avg + 'ms')
    console.log('<======== startsWith')
    console.log('')
    /* startsWith END */

    falseResults.sort((a, b) => a.avg - b.avg)
    trueResults.sort((a, b) => a.avg - b.avg)

    console.log('false results from fastest to slowest avg:', falseResults)
    console.log('true results from fastest to slowest avg:', trueResults)
}

I runned this benchmark test on Chrome 75, Firefox 67, Safari 12 and Opera 62.

I haven't included Edge and IE because I do not have them on this machine, but if someone of you wants to run the script against Edge and at least IE 9 and share the output here I would be very curious to see the results.

Just remember that you need to recreate the 3 long strings and save the script in a file which you then open in your browser as copy/paste on the browser's console will block it as each string's length is >= 1.000.000).

Here are the outputs:

Chrome 75 (substring wins):

false results from fastest to slowest avg:
1)  {"label":"substring","avg":0.08271}
2)  {"label":"slice","avg":0.08615}
3)  {"label":"lastIndexOf","avg":0.77025}
4)  {"label":"indexOf","avg":1.64375}
5)  {"label":"startsWith","avg":3.5454}

true results from fastest to slowest avg:
1)  {"label":"substring","avg":0.08213}
2)  {"label":"slice","avg":0.08342}
3)  {"label":"lastIndexOf","avg":0.7831}
4)  {"label":"indexOf","avg":0.88988}
5)  {"label":"startsWith","avg":3.55448}

Firefox 67 (indexOf wins):

false results from fastest to slowest avg
1)  {"label":"indexOf","avg":0.1807}
2)  {"label":"startsWith","avg":0.74621}
3)  {"label":"substring","avg":0.74898}
4)  {"label":"slice","avg":0.78584}
5)  {"label":"lastIndexOf","avg":0.79668}

true results from fastest to slowest avg:
1)  {"label":"indexOf","avg":0.09528}
2)  {"label":"substring","avg":0.75468}
3)  {"label":"startsWith","avg":0.76717}
4)  {"label":"slice","avg":0.77222}
5)  {"label":"lastIndexOf","avg":0.80527}

Safari 12 (slice wins for false results, startsWith wins for true results, also Safari is the fastest in terms of total time to to execute the whole test):

false results from fastest to slowest avg:
1) "{\"label\":\"slice\",\"avg\":0.0362}"
2) "{\"label\":\"startsWith\",\"avg\":0.1141}"
3) "{\"label\":\"lastIndexOf\",\"avg\":0.11512}"
4) "{\"label\":\"substring\",\"avg\":0.14751}"
5) "{\"label\":\"indexOf\",\"avg\":0.23109}"

true results from fastest to slowest avg:
1) "{\"label\":\"startsWith\",\"avg\":0.11207}"
2) "{\"label\":\"lastIndexOf\",\"avg\":0.12196}"
3) "{\"label\":\"substring\",\"avg\":0.12495}"
4) "{\"label\":\"indexOf\",\"avg\":0.33667}"
5) "{\"label\":\"slice\",\"avg\":0.49923}"

Opera 62 (substring wins. Results are similar to Chrome and I am not surprised as Opera is based on Chromium and Blink):

false results from fastest to slowest avg:
{"label":"substring","avg":0.09321}
{"label":"slice","avg":0.09463}
{"label":"lastIndexOf","avg":0.95347}
{"label":"indexOf","avg":1.6337}
{"label":"startsWith","avg":3.61454}

true results from fastest to slowest avg:
1)  {"label":"substring","avg":0.08855}
2)  {"label":"slice","avg":0.12227}
3)  {"label":"indexOf","avg":0.79914}
4)  {"label":"lastIndexOf","avg":1.05086}
5)  {"label":"startsWith","avg":3.70808}

It turns out every browser has its own implementation details (apart Opera, which is based on Chrome's Chromium and Blink).

Of course, further test with different use cases could and should be performed (e.g. when needle is really short compared to haystack, when haystack is shorter than needle, etc...), but in my case I needed to compare very long strings and wanted to share it here.

I am not sure for javascript but in typescript i did something like

var str = "something";
(<String>str).startsWith("some");

I guess it should work on js too. I hope it helps!