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Text function

FINDB

Finds one text string within another, counting bytes rather than characters, for double-byte languages.

Rarely usedDifficulty 1250 · ProficientUsage rank #283 of 520
Practice · 2 questions →

When to use it

FIND in bytes for double-byte languages. Identical to FIND on systems without a DBCS language.

The shape of it

Syntax
=FINDB(find_text, within_text, [start_num])

Worked examples

  • Single-byte

    =FINDB("b","abc") 2

    Single-byte text behaves like FIND.

  • Double-byte

    =FINDB("京","東京都") 3

    On a DBCS system each character is two bytes, so 京 starts at byte 3.

  • Find a space

    =FINDB(" ","Blake Ekelund") 6

    Same as FIND here.

Worth knowing

  • Use FIND unless you need byte positions for a legacy system.
  • Pair with MIDB and LENB.
  • Case sensitive like FIND.

Where it goes wrong

  • #VALUE! when not found.
  • Byte positions differ between systems, so results are not portable.

Related

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