Quick question: getting URL parameters using Javascript

[SiD the Turtle]

Hey guys. Believe it or not I've never used Javascript but now I have a need to for a static page. Clearly my Google powers are week as I'm not bringing back anything.

Basically if I have the page 'www.example.com/index.html?foo=bar' how can I get the parameter foo and return bar? If this was PHP this would be simple, but I can't find a comparable function in Javascript.

If it helps there will only ever be one parameter, though the variable may contain spaces.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Thanks, I threw together this, though it seems a little messy:

document.write(window.location.search.substring(window.location.search.indexOf('=') + 1));