WoW:API strfind

string.find(s, pattern [, init [, plain]])

Find the first occurance of the pattern in the string passed. If an instance of the pattern is found a pair of values representing the start and end of the string is returned. If the pattern cannot be found nil is returned.

> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "Lua")
7       9
> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "banana")
nil

We can optionally specify where to start the search with a third argument. The argument may also be negative which means we count back from the end of the string and start the search.

> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "Lua", 1)  -- start at first character
7       9
> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "Lua", 8)  -- "Lua" not found again after character 8
nil
> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "e", -5)   -- first "e" 5 characters from the end
13      13

The pattern argument can be a regular expression which allows more complex searchs. See the PatternsTutorial for more information. We can turn off the regular expression feature by using the optional fourth argument plain. plain takes a boolean value and must be preceeded by init. E.g.,

> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "%su")          -- find a space character followed by "u"
10      11
> = string.find("Hello Lua user", "%su", 1, true) -- turn on plain searches, now not found
nil