jquery - check if string begins with something?

Question

I know that I can do like ^= to see if an id starts with something, and I tried using that for this, but it didn't work... Basically, I'm retrieving the url and I want to set a class for an element for pathnames that start in a certain way...

So,

var pathname = window.location.pathname;  //gives me /sub/1/train/yonks/459087

I want to make sure that for every path that starts with /sub/1, I can set a class for an element...

if(pathname ^= '/sub/1') {  //this didn't work... 
        ...

Answer 1

Have a look at JavaScript substring() method: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref%5Fsubstring.asp

Answer 2

Use stringObject.substring

if (pathname.substring(0, 6) == "/sub/1") {
    // ...
}