$index(<characters> <text>)

• The <characters> argument is a dword. This is different from most functions.
• <characters> may contain any number of different characters. If you want to include the space character, enclose <characters> in double quotes. If you want to include the double-quote character, then put some other character before it that won't be in <text>.
• If the first character in <characters> is the caret (“^”), then the list of <characters> is negated; <characters> includes all characters that are NOT after the caret.
• Counting begins after the first space after <characters>. If multiple spaces separate <characters> and <text>, only the first such space is the separator; further spaces are part of <text> for the purpose of counting.
• The return value is the number of initial characters in <text> that are NOT any of the characters specified by <characters>; the position of the first instance of any character in <characters> in the string <text>, counting from zero.
• If none of the characters in <characters> appears in <text> (a failed search), then -1 is returned.

It used to be common to use $index() to find a character in a string so that you could extract the parts of the string before and after the character. This is more easily done by $before() and $after() though.

  -1   no character in <characters> was found in <text>
> -1   index to first instance of something in <characters> in <text>

This function originally appeared in ircII.

$index(abc hello there bob)          returns 12
$index(abc   hello there bob)        returns 14 (because of the spaces after 'c' and before 'h')
$index(xyz hello there bob)          returns -1
$index()                             returns the empty string