findint

FindInt is a naming convention used in programming for a function that locates an integer value within a sequence or extracts an integer from text. The exact behavior depends on the context and the language, but two common interpretations are finding the position of an integer in a collection and parsing the first integer from a string.

In collection context, a findInt function typically returns the index of the first element equal to the target integer, or a sentinel value such as -1 if the target is not present. Some languages allow returning a nullable index or an optional value if the integer is not found. The function usually assumes exact equality and does not perform broader numeric comparisons unless specified.

In text-processing contexts, findInt may parse a string to locate the first contiguous sequence of digits (optionally with a leading sign) and convert it to an integer, returning the parsed value or the position where parsing begins. Some variants focus on extracting the value, while others return the substring’s start index.

Common pseudocode for a collection search:

function findInt(collection, target):

for i from 0 to length(collection) - 1:

if collection[i] == target:

return i

return -1

Edge cases include duplicate occurrences, negative numbers, empty collections, and numeric type coercion. Performance is typically linear in the size of the collection, though precomputed indices or hashing can improve lookup speed.

See also: indexOf, find, parseInt, regular expressions for integers. In practice, the exact name and behavior of findInt vary by language and library, and alternative functions may exist that provide similar functionality under different names.