contains - test if a word is present in a list

Synopsis

contains [OPTIONS] [--] KEY [VALUES ...]

Description

contains tests whether the set VALUES contains the string KEY. If so, contains exits with code 0; if not, it exits with code 1.

The following options are available:

-i or --index

Print the index (number of the element in the set) of the first matching element.

-h or --help

Displays help about using this command.

Options must be passed before KEY. All arguments after KEY will be considered a value, regardless if they start with a - or not, including --. If KEY itself starts with a -, use a -- argument to separate it from the options.

See the examples below.

Example

If animals is a list of animals, the following will test if animals contains “cat”:

if contains cat $animals
   echo Your animal list is evil!
end

This code will add some directories to PATH if they aren’t yet included:

for i in ~/bin /usr/local/bin
    if not contains $i $PATH
        set PATH $PATH $i
    end
end

While this will check if function hasargs is being ran with the -q option:

function hasargs
    if contains -- -q $argv
        echo '$argv contains a -q option'
    end
end

The -- here stops contains from treating -q to an option to itself. Instead it treats it as a normal string to check.

contains -i foo -q -- foo

This returns 3, since all arguments after the key are considered a value.