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New String Function: Find Nth

Currently there is a function in Alteryx called FindString() that finds the first occurrence of your target in a string. However, sometimes we want to find the nth occurrence of our target in a string. 

 

FindString("Hello World", "o")  returns 4 as the 0-indexed count of characters until the first "o" in the string. But what if we want to find the location of the second "o" in the text? This gets messy with nested find statements and unworkable beyond looking for the second or third instance of something. 

 

I would like a function added such that 

 

FindNth("Hello World", "o", 2) Would return 7 as the 0-indexed count of characters until the second instance of "o" in my string. 

8 Comments
patrick_digan
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Great Idea!

DavidP
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Great idea! We need this!

DataNath
17 - Castor

This would be great! Have had quite a few instances where this would’ve saved a lot of time.

AlteryxCommunityTeam
Alteryx Community Team
Alteryx Community Team
Status changed to: Accepting Votes
 
cgoodman3
14 - Magnetar
14 - Magnetar

It could probably be done with regex, but @balders-ie's idea is such a simple one (and far more accessible than doing it with regex) that I'd love to see this implemented.

Taylor_S
8 - Asteroid

Literally just had an instance of this where I had to create a somewhat unruly solution to solve and 100% believe this should be implemented. Great idea!

mikael_svalgaard
7 - Meteor

I support this idea!

NicoleJ
Alteryx
Alteryx
Status changed to: Accepted

We have quite a few new functions on the list to consider - we'll include this one in the queue!