Checking for an initial substring in Icon

To check whether a string begins with a particular sequence of characters, use the function

    match ( t, s )

where t is the target string to be searched for, and s is the string to be searched.

If t matches the initial characters of s, the function returns the position within s just after the part that matched t.
If t does not match the initial characters of s, the ``match()'' function fails.

For example, the expression

    match ( "foo", "rumplestiltskin" )

fails, while the expression

    match ( "foo", "foobar" )

succeeds and returns the value 4, which is the position just to the left of the "bar" in the second argument.

John Shipman, john@nmt.edu

Last updated: 1996/01/06 21:12:57 UT
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/lang/icon/match.html