INSTR

A function which returns the position of a sub-string within a string, optionally starting the search at a specified place in the string. The leftmost character position is 1. If the sub-string is not found, 0 is returned.

The first string is searched for any occurrence of the second string.

There must not be any spaces between INSTR and the opening bracket.

X=INSTR(A$,B$)
position=INSTR(word$,guess$)
Y=INSTR(A$,B$,Z%) :REM START AT POSITION Z%

You can use this function for validation purposes. If you wished to test A$ to see if was one of the set FRED BERT JIM JOHN, you could use the following:

set$="FRED BERT JIM JOHN"
IF INSTR(set$,A$) PROC_valid ELSE PROC_invalid

The character used to separate the items in the set must be excluded from the characters possible in A$. One way to do this is to make the separator an unusual character, say CHR$(127).

z$=CHR$(127)
set$="FRED"+z$+"BERT"+z$+"JIM"+z$+"JOHN"

Syntax

<n-var>=INSTR(<str>,<str>[,<numeric>])

Associated Keywords