Match exact string

"^" For the begining of the line "$" for the end of it. Eg.:

var re = /^abc$/;

Would match "abc" but not "1abc" or "abc1". You can learn more at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions

It depends. You could

string.match(/^abc$/)

But that would not match the following string: 'the first 3 letters of the alphabet are abc. not abc123'

I think you would want to use \b (word boundaries):

var str = 'the first 3 letters of the alphabet are abc. not abc123';
var pat = /\b(abc)\b/g;
console.log(str.match(pat));

Live example: http://jsfiddle.net/uu5VJ/

If the former solution works for you, I would advise against using it.

That means you may have something like the following:

var strs = ['abc', 'abc1', 'abc2']
for (var i = 0; i < strs.length; i++) {
    if (strs[i] == 'abc') {
        //do something 
    }
    else {
        //do something else
    }
}

While you could use

if (str[i].match(/^abc$/g)) {
    //do something 
}

It would be considerably more resource-intensive. For me, a general rule of thumb is for a simple string comparison use a conditional expression, for a more dynamic pattern use a regular expression.

More on JavaScript regexes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions

Use the start and end delimiters: ^abc$