"lineAtOffset"?

[Geoff Canyon]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Mark Waddingham <mark at livecode.com> wrote:

> the line containing x in y
>   the word containing x in y
>   the item containing x in y
>   ...
>
> Suddenly, a clear pattern starts to emerge and you can start to see what
> you could do if you just add adjectives, and prepositions:
>
>   the last word containing x in y
>   the first line containing x in y after index 2
>

How about:

line 1 containing x in y
word 47 containing x in y
item -3 containing x in y

Adding an index allows for a natural english syntax, a clear result,
maximum flexibility, and pathological extension, i.e.:

word -2 containing "i" in item 14 containing "test" in line 23 containing
"index"

Another thing to consider is that this method doesn't allow for getting
both the line/item/word and the index of it. I don't have a good English
syntax for that off the top of my head.

This syntax would make it easy to do a more detailed match:

line 4 matching "a*b" in y