find ';' VALUE ';' SEARCHED

Summary

The find macro returns the starting index position of a substring within a target string, or -1 if not found. This is a simple string search, not a regex pattern match.

Syntax

${find;<target>;<substring>}

Parameters

• target - The string to search in
• substring - The substring to find (literal string, not regex)

Behavior

• Returns the index of the first occurrence of substring
• Returns -1 if substring is not found
• Index is 0-based (first character is position 0)
• Case-sensitive search
• Not a regex pattern match

Examples

Find substring position:

${find;hello world;world}
# Returns: 6

Search not found:

${find;hello world;foo}
# Returns: -1

Check if string contains substring:

${if;${matches;${find;${path};/test/};-?[0-9]+};contains-test;no-test}

Find file extension:

${find;${filename};.}

Use Cases

• Locating substring positions
• Checking if string contains text
• String parsing and analysis
• Finding delimiters
• Conditional logic based on presence

Notes

• Returns integer index (0-based)
• Not a regex search (use ${matches} for regex)
• Case-sensitive
• Returns first occurrence only
• See also: ${lastindexof} for last occurrence
• See also: ${matches} for regex matching
• See also: ${indexof} for list searching

See test cases in MacroTestsForDocsExamples.java