# $EPIC: index,v 1.7 2003/07/05 06:34:00 jnelson Exp $
Synopsis:
   $index(<characters> <text>)

Technical:
   * If the <characters> argument is omitted the empty string is returned.
   * <characters> may contain any number of different characters.  If you 
     want to include the space character, enclose <characters> in double 
     quotes.  If you want to include the double-quote character, then put
     some other character before it that won't be in <text>.
   * If the first character in <characters> is the caret ("^"), then the
     list of <characters> is negated; <characters> includes all characters
     that are NOT after the caret.
   * Counting begins after the first space after <characters>.  If multiple
     spaces separate <characters> and <text>, only the first such space is 
     the separator; further spaces are part of <text> for the purpose of 
     counting.
   * The return value is the number of initial characters in <text> that 
     are NOT any of the characters specified by <characters>; the position
     of the first instance of any character in <characters> in the string
     <text>, counting from zero.
   * If none of the characters in <characters> appears in <text> (a failed
     search), then -1 is returned.

Practical:
   It used to be common to use $index() to find a character in a string so
   that you could extract the parts of the string before and after the 
   character.  This is more easily done by $before() and $after() though.

Returns:
     -1   no character in <characters> was found in <text>
   > -1   index to first instance of something in <characters> in <text>

History:
   This function originally appeared in ircII.

Examples:
   $index(abc hello there bob)          returns 12
   $index(abc   hello there bob)        returns 14
		(because of the spaces after 'c' and before 'h')
   $index(xyz hello there bob)          returns -1
   $index()				returns the empty string