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From: "Dave Saville" <d...@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Subject: Re: wordposAtIndex() / wordAtIndex(): find the number of the word at a given index position
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:44:42 +0000 (UTC)
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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:22:37 UTC, muk...@gmail.com wrote:

> I am looking for a function that would return the number of a word at a given index position.
> 
> Example: assuming function syntax is wordposAtIndex(n, haystack)
> 
> wordposAtIndex(10, "Georg Friedrich H„ndel, a great componist") should return "3"
> 
> This way I can retrieve the word at that given index or perform other word proximity processing for that matter. The index would generally result from a rexx pos() or a regular expression match.

string = "Georg Friedrich H„ndel, a great componist"
n = 17
do i = 1 to words(string)
  x = wordindex(string, i)
  if x >= n then do
    say word(string, i) i
    leave;
  End
End

Never got the hang of REXX functions but you get the idea. But, what 
about if n hits punctuation or white space - which way do you jump?

-- 
Regards
Dave Saville