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 = 
how now brown cow?
--> b = strfind(a,'ow')

b = 
  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 = 
 [how now brown cow] [quick brown fox] [coffee anyone?] 

--> b = strfind(a,'ow')

b = 
 [1 4 double array] [9] []