Vital.sandbox - string.find

local start_at, end_at, ... = string.find(input, pattern, start_at = 1, plain_text = false)

Type	Name	Description
`string`	input	String to be searched in
`string`	pattern	Pattern to search for (supports Lua patterns unless plain_text is true)
`int`	start_at	Position to start searching from - negative counts from end
`bool`	plain_text	When true - pattern is treated as plain text, not a pattern

Type	Name	Description
`int`	start_at	Starting index of the match, or `nil` if not found
`int`	end_at	Ending index of the match, or `nil` if not found
`...`	...	Any captured substrings from the pattern

Find the position of a substring

local s, e = string.find("hello world", "world")

engine.print("info", s, e) --7  11

Find the first occurrence of a character

local pos = string.find("hello", "l")

engine.print("info", pos) --3

Search starting from a specific position

local s, e = string.find("hello hello", "hello", 7)

engine.print("info", s, e) --7  11

Find a pattern match position

local s, e = string.find("Price: $25.99", "%d+")

engine.print("info", s, e) --9  10

Find a pattern and capture a group

local s, e, num = string.find("hello 123 world", "(%d+)")

engine.print("info", s, e, num) --7  9  123

Use plain text search to disable pattern matching

local s, e = string.find("Cost: $5.00", "$", 1, true)

engine.print("info", s, e) --7  7

Find a pattern and capture multiple groups

local s, e, word1, word2 = string.find("hello world", "(%a+) (%a+)")

engine.print("info", word1, word2) --hello  world

Search from the end using a negative index

local s, e = string.find("hello", "l", -3)

engine.print("info", s, e) --3  3

string.find