Kreara

Index, Indexc and Indexw functions

Prepared by Meena R S

The INDEX, INDEXC and INDEXW functions are used for determining the character matches. These functions are useful for testing purposes. The index and indexc functions can indicate if a string of characters is present in a target variable. Both functions return the position number of the match in the target variable. A zero indicates that the search argument is not present in the target variable.

For finding a special character such as a letter, a group of letters, or special characters, Index functions can be used and it is case sensitive. The syntax is,

INDEX (source, excerpt)

The INDEXC function allows multiple arguments and will identify the first occurrence of any of the characters in any of the arguments, but otherwise functions similarly to the index function.

/* Example: 1 */

/* Results*/

The INDEXW function searches source, from left to right, for the first occurrence of excerpt and returns the position in source of the substring's first character. If the substring is not found in source, INDEXW returns a value of 0. If there are multiple occurrences of the string, INDEXW returns only the position of the first occurrence.

The INDEXW function is case sensitive function that performs exactly the same function as the INDEX function, with one significant exception. The indexw function searches for strings that are words, whereas the index function searches for patterns as separate words or as parts of other words.

/* Example: 2 */

/* Results */

Result Explanation

The above program demonstrates the difference between INDEX and INDEXW functions. In the first observation in the table above, the INDEX function returns a 1 because the letters "the" as part of the word "there" begin the string. Since the INDEXW function needs either white space at the beginning or end of a string to delimit a word, it returns a 12, the position of the word "the" in the string. Observation 3 emphasizes the fact that a punctuation mark does not serve as a word separator. Finally, since the string "the" does not appear anywhere in the fourth observation, both functions return a 0.