Find the index position of a substring in a string

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