This is a documentation subpage for Template:Strfind short. It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

The Template:Strfind_short finds the location, in parameter {1} with length lenstr=15 (up to 99), of the text string {2} with length {3}. It uses a simple, quick method to compare the strings. If the string is not found, the result is zero (0), indicating no match. The parameter lenstr can be shorter than the actual 1st string, to stop the search earlier (and faster). The template was designed to use only 5 levels of expansion depth, rather than 18 or more levels as in other string-searching templates.

Usage:  {{strfind short|abcdef|bcd|3}}       → 2

{{strfind short|123456789.|45|2}} → 4

{{strfind short|x+2.437-6|2.43|4}} → 3

{{strfind short|:***abcd**|*ab| {{strlen_short|*ab}} }} → 4

If the length of the substring {2} is not known, or changes often, then the extra template {strlen_quick} can be used as: {{strlen_quick|{{{2}}} }}, to determine the length of string 2, quickly.

The following are examples:

• {{strfind short|abcdef|bcd|3}}       → 2
• {{strfind short|Fast Forward (film)|(|1}}       → 14
• {{strfind short|Fast Forward Longer (film)|(|1}} → 21
• {{strfind short|Fast Forward Longer (film)|(|1|lenstr=26}} → 21

• {{strfind short|A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (film)|(|1|lenstr=53}} → 48

The operation of Template:Strfind_short was designed to run 4x times faster than other string-search templates, and use only 5 levels of expansion depth (not 18). However, it typically runs 20x times faster (or shorter) for strings up to 15 characters long. The post-expand include size averages about 300 bytes (rather than 6,000 bytes for other string-search templates). It can be used over 5,000 times per page (compared to only 350 times for other search templates). For strings over 50 long, it will use more resources, due to processing strings larger than other templates had allowed.

• {{Str find}} – Returns the numerical location of a given string in a string, up to 50 characters.
• {{Str find long}} – Returns the numerical location of a given string in a string, up to 80 characters.
• {{Strfind short}} – Searches for a short string in a longer (up to 99 char) string. Performs faster than {{str find}}
• {{Str index}} – Returns a given character from a string, but not accented letters.
• {{Str len}} – Returns a string's length. Can count up to 500 characters.
• {{Strlen quick}} – Gets string length quickly (better performance), up to 70 long.
• {{Strlen short}} – Gets length of short strings (1-50), using only 2 expansion levels.