STRFIND Find Substring in a String

Section: String Functions

Usage

Searches through a string for a pattern, and returns the starting positions of the pattern in an array. There are two forms for the strfind function. The first is for single strings
   ndx = strfind(string, pattern)

the resulting array ndx contains the starting indices in string for the pattern pattern. The second form takes a cell array of strings

   ndx = strfind(cells, pattern)

and applies the search operation to each string in the cell array.

Example

Here we apply strfind to a simple string
--> a = 'how now brown cow?'
a = 
  <string>  - size: [1 18]
 how now brown cow?
--> b = strfind(a,'ow')
b = 
  <int32>  - size: [1 4]
 
Columns 1 to 4
  2   6  11  16  

Here we search over multiple strings contained in a cell array.

--> a = {'how now brown cow','quick brown fox','coffee anyone?'}
a = 
  <cell array> - size: [1 3]
 
Columns 1 to 3
 how now brown cow    quick brown fox    coffee anyone?    
--> b = strfind(a,'ow')
b = 
  <cell array> - size: [1 3]
 
Columns 1 to 3
 [[1 4] int32]    [9]    []