I'm prepared to be embarrassed (as much as one can be), but note, that in my code I often want to search for the first character that is NOT something -- like what is the index of the first non-space character?

To find the first incidence of a character, we can use 

my $start = 1+index $_,q(");
die "No quoted string found" unless $start;
$_ = substr $_,$start;
my $stop = index, $_, q(");
$_ = substr $_,0,$stop;

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I was noticing in a section of code, a place where I get rid of leading space and have been forced into 
s/^\s*//;

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which tends to be notably slower than equivalent index/substr code.

So I was wondering how to find the first character that is *not* a character, like: 

my $start = 1+nindex $_," ";

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Though certainly at least a set would be useful, like: 
my $start = 1+nindex $_,"[\t ]";

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as long as it didn't invoke the regex engine.

Has anyone else run into a need for this type of paradigm: finding the first byte that is NOT the listed byte (or one of the listed bytes)?

Is there a need for a 2nd set of instructions to skip bytes until 'not equal', vs. index's skip bytes until 'equal'?

Thanks!

In reply to opposite of index+rindex? How-to? Needed? by perl-diddler

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