contains - test if a word is present in a list¶

Synopsis¶

contains [OPTIONS] KEY [VALUES ...]

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.

Note that contains interprets all arguments starting with a - as an option to contains, until an -- argument is reached.

See the examples below.

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.