From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Return-Path: <zsh-users-return-5689-mason-zsh=primenet.com.au@sunsite.dk>
Received: (qmail 14978 invoked from network); 13 Jan 2003 18:13:19 -0000
Received: from sunsite.dk (130.225.247.90)
  by ns1.primenet.com.au with SMTP; 13 Jan 2003 18:13:19 -0000
Received: (qmail 4438 invoked by alias); 13 Jan 2003 18:13:07 -0000
Mailing-List: contact zsh-users-help@sunsite.dk; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
X-No-Archive: yes
X-Seq: 5689
Received: (qmail 4431 invoked from network); 13 Jan 2003 18:13:07 -0000
From: Carlos Carvalho <carlos@fisica.ufpr.br>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <15907.432.363150.443412@fisica.ufpr.br>
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 16:13:04 -0200
To: zsh-users@sunsite.dk
Subject: how to search for a substring in a parameter?
X-Mailer: VM 7.07 under Emacs 19.34.1

I'm trying to see if the value of a parameter contains a given string
but didn't find an elegant way. All pattern matching substitutions
return only the non-matched portion of the value. There's a way to do
substitutions but not testing. I must be missing something. I'm using

   if (( ${#foo//pattern/} < ${#foo} )); then
	# contains pattern
   else
	# doesn't contain pattern
   fi

Is there a better way?