# Find proc (regex)

Source: https://ref.dm-lang.org/regex/proc/Find
Added in BYOND 510.

### Format
> `Find(haystack, Start=1, End=0)`

### Returns
> The position of the matched text, or 0 if no match was found.

### Args
- `haystack`: The text to be searched
- `Start`: The start position (in bytes) to search; defaults to 1, or to src.next if this is a global pattern
- `End`: The position of the byte after the end of the search; 0 is the end. The actual match is allowed to extend past End.


Finds the regular expression pattern within the "haystack" text. The following vars are set by the match:

* text: The text that was searched.
* index: The index where the match was found (same as the return value)
* match: The actual matched text
* group: If the expression contains capturing groups with the ( ) parentheses operator, this is a list that holds the text found in those groups. group[1] is the first group, and so on.
* next: If the "g" flag was used to create thie expression, this is the next index to begin searching.

In a global expression (using the "g" flag), Find() can be called repeatedly on the same piece of text and the Start position will be advanced automatically unless you specify it.

> [!note]
> 
> In strings containing non-ASCII characters, byte position and character position are not the same thing. Use `Find_char()` to work with character counts instead of bytes, at a performance cost. See the [Unicode](https://ref.dm-lang.org/notes/Unicode.md) section for more information.

### See also
- [Regular expressions](https://ref.dm-lang.org/notes/regex.md)
- [regex datum](https://ref.dm-lang.org/regex/index.md)
- [Replace proc (regex)](https://ref.dm-lang.org/regex/proc/Replace.md)
- [regex vars](https://ref.dm-lang.org/regex/var/index.md)
- [regex proc](https://ref.dm-lang.org/proc/regex.md)
- [findtext proc](https://ref.dm-lang.org/proc/findtext.md)