contains - test if a word is present in a list — fish-shell 3.3.1 documentation

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

## Synopsis

    contains [OPTIONS] KEY [VALUES...]

## Description

`contains` tests whether the set `VALUES` contains the string `KEY`. If so, `contains` exits with status 0; if not, it exits with status 1.

The following options are available:

- `-i` or `--index` print the word index

Note that, like GNU tools and most of fish's builtins, `contains` interprets all arguments starting with a `-` as options to contains, until it reaches an argument that is `--` (two dashes). See the examples below.

## Example

If $animals is a list of animals, the following will test if it contains a 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 `hasargs` was run 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.