all Python 3Byte sequencesfunction

bytearray.find

bytearray — search

Index of the first occurrence, or -1.

Syntax

ba.find(...)

A miss gives -1 rather than an exception, and -1 is a legal index, so ba[ba.find(b'x')] quietly hands you the last byte instead of failing. Use b'na' in ba when you only need presence; reach for find when the position itself matters. The start and end arguments merely narrow the search window — the returned index is still counted from the beginning of the bytearray.

Examples

print(bytearray(b'banana').find(b'na'))   # → 2
print(bytearray(b'banana').find(b'na', 3))   # → 4
ba = bytearray(b'key: value'); print(ba[ba.find(b':') + 2:].decode())   # → value
print(bytearray(b'banana').find(b'z'))   # → -1
print(bytearray(b'banana').index(b'z'))   # → ValueError

See also

Common errors

Open in the full glossarydocs.python.orgReport an inaccuracy