How to perform Regex on listjs hackerlist?

Question

I would like to perform regex on a search functionality of List.js. How it works by default is that it searches for a word which exists in a whole sentence. What I want to achieve is that it should search a word which is the start of a sentence.

In above picture, you see "Was" exists in all 4 sentences but I only want it to short list where "Was" is the first word of each sentence.

ListJs Source

Answer 1

Thanks guys for suggestions. For now I have done a workaround by modifying the core list.js file. I replaced:

var search = {
    list: function() {
        for (var k = 0, kl = list.items.length; k < kl; k++) {
            search.item(list.items[k]);
        }
    },
    item: function(item) {
        item.found = false;
        for (var j = 0, jl = columns.length; j < jl; j++) {
            if (search.values(item.values(), columns[j])) {
                item.found = true;
                return;
            }
        }
    },
    values: function(values, column) {
        if (values.hasOwnProperty(column)) {
            text = toString(values[column]).toLowerCase();
            if ((searchString !== "") && (text.search(searchString) > -1)) {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    },
    reset: function() {
        list.reset.search();
        list.searched = false;
    }
};

With

if (typeof String.prototype.startsWith != 'function') {
    // see below for better implementation!
    String.prototype.startsWith = function (str) {
        return this.indexOf(str) === 0;
    };
}
var search = {
    list: function() {
        for (var k = 0, kl = list.items.length; k < kl; k++) {
            search.item(list.items[k]);
        }
    },
    item: function(item) {
        item.found = false;
        for (var j = 0, jl = columns.length; j < jl; j++) {
            if (search.values(item.values(), columns[j])) {
                item.found = true;
                return;
            }
        }
    },
    values: function(values, column) {
        if (values.hasOwnProperty(column)) {
            text = toString(values[column]).toLowerCase();
            if ((searchString !== "") && (text.startsWith(searchString))) {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    },
    reset: function() {
        list.reset.search();
        list.searched = false;
    }
};

Explanation: I created startsWith function (found on stackoverflow) which checks whether the search string starts with the exact characters of a given sentence, and modified the values function of parent search block. and replaced its text.search() function with my startsWith function.