def findnth(haystack, needle, n):
    parts= haystack.split(needle, n+1)
    if len(parts)<=n+1:
        return -1
    return len(haystack)-len(parts[-1])-len(needle)

'foo bar bar bar'.replace('bar', 'XXX', 1).find('bar')

def find_nth(haystack, needle, n):
    start = haystack.find(needle)
    while start >= 0 and n > 1:
        start = haystack.find(needle, start+len(needle))
        n -= 1
    return start

>>> find_nth("foofoofoofoo", "foofoo", 2)
6

def find_nth_overlapping(haystack, needle, n):
    start = haystack.find(needle)
    while start >= 0 and n > 1:
        start = haystack.find(needle, start+1)
        n -= 1
    return start

>>> find_nth_overlapping("foofoofoofoo", "foofoo", 2)
3

def find_2nd(string, substring):
   return string.find(substring, string.find(substring) + 1)

>>> import re
>>> s = "ababdfegtduab"
>>> [m.start() for m in re.finditer(r"ab",s)]
[0, 2, 11]
>>> [m.start() for m in re.finditer(r"ab",s)][2] #index 2 is third occurrence
11

def findnth(haystack, needle, n):
    parts= haystack.split(needle, n+1)
    if len(parts)<=n+1:
        return -1
    return len(haystack)-len(parts[-1])-len(needle)

def find_nth(s, x, n=0, overlap=False):
    l = 1 if overlap else len(x)
    i = -l
    for c in xrange(n + 1):
        i = s.find(x, i + l)
        if i < 0:
            break
    return i

In [1]: import _find_nth, find_nth, mmap

In [2]: f = open('bigfile', 'r')

In [3]: mm = mmap.mmap(f.fileno(), 0, access=mmap.ACCESS_READ)

In [4]: %time s = mm[:]
CPU times: user 813 ms, sys: 3.25 s, total: 4.06 s
Wall time: 17.7 s

In [5]: %timeit find_nth.findnth(s, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 29.9 s per loop

In [6]: %timeit find_nth.find_nth(s, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 774 ms per loop

In [7]: %timeit find_nth.find_nth(mm, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 1.21 s per loop

#include <Python.h>
#include <string.h>

off_t _find_nth(const char *buf, size_t l, char c, int n) {
    off_t i;
    for (i = 0; i < l; ++i) {
        if (buf[i] == c && n-- == 0) {
            return i;
        }
    }
    return -1;
}

off_t _find_nth2(const char *buf, size_t l, char c, int n) {
    const char *b = buf - 1;
    do {
        b = memchr(b + 1, c, l);
        if (!b) return -1;
    } while (n--);
    return b - buf;
}

/* mmap_object is private in mmapmodule.c - replicate beginning here */
typedef struct {
    PyObject_HEAD
    char *data;
    size_t size;
} mmap_object;

typedef struct {
    const char *s;
    size_t l;
    char c;
    int n;
} params;

int parse_args(PyObject *args, params *P) {
    PyObject *obj;
    const char *x;

    if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "Osi", &obj, &x, &P->n)) {
        return 1;
    }
    PyTypeObject *type = Py_TYPE(obj);

    if (type == &PyString_Type) {
        P->s = PyString_AS_STRING(obj);
        P->l = PyString_GET_SIZE(obj);
    } else if (!strcmp(type->tp_name, "mmap.mmap")) {
        mmap_object *m_obj = (mmap_object*) obj;
        P->s = m_obj->data;
        P->l = m_obj->size;
    } else {
        PyErr_SetString(PyExc_TypeError, "Cannot obtain char * from argument 0");
        return 1;
    }
    P->c = x[0];
    return 0;
}

static PyObject* py_find_nth(PyObject *self, PyObject *args) {
    params P;
    if (!parse_args(args, &P)) {
        return Py_BuildValue("i", _find_nth(P.s, P.l, P.c, P.n));
    } else {
        return NULL;
    }
}

static PyObject* py_find_nth2(PyObject *self, PyObject *args) {
    params P;
    if (!parse_args(args, &P)) {
        return Py_BuildValue("i", _find_nth2(P.s, P.l, P.c, P.n));
    } else {
        return NULL;
    }
}

static PyMethodDef methods[] = {
    {"find_nth", py_find_nth, METH_VARARGS, ""},
    {"find_nth2", py_find_nth2, METH_VARARGS, ""},
    {0}
};

PyMODINIT_FUNC init_find_nth(void) {
    Py_InitModule("_find_nth", methods);
}

from distutils.core import setup, Extension
module = Extension('_find_nth', sources=['_find_nthmodule.c'])
setup(ext_modules=[module])

In [8]: %timeit _find_nth.find_nth(mm, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 218 ms per loop

In [9]: %timeit _find_nth.find_nth(s, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 216 ms per loop

In [10]: %timeit _find_nth.find_nth2(mm, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 307 ms per loop

In [11]: %timeit _find_nth.find_nth2(s, 'n', 1000000)
1 loops, best of 3: 304 ms per loop

def find_nth(s, x, n):
    i = -1
    for _ in range(n):
        i = s.find(x, i + len(x))
        if i == -1:
            break
    return i

print find_nth('bananabanana', 'an', 3)

def find_nth(s, x, n, i = 0):
    i = s.find(x, i)
    if n == 1 or i == -1:
        return i
    else:
        return find_nth(s, x, n - 1, i + len(x))

print find_nth('bananabanana', 'an', 3)

text = "This is a test from a test ok"

firstTest = text.find('test')

print text.find('test', firstTest + 1)

import itertools
import re

def find_nth(haystack, needle, n = 1):
    """
    Find the starting index of the nth occurrence of ``needle`` in
    ``haystack``.

    If ``needle`` is a ``str``, this will perform an exact substring
    match; if it is a ``RegexpObject``, this will perform a regex
    search.

    If ``needle`` doesn't appear in ``haystack``, return ``-1``. If
    ``needle`` doesn't appear in ``haystack`` ``n`` times,
    return ``-1``.

    Arguments
    ---------
    * ``needle`` the substring (or a ``RegexpObject``) to find
    * ``haystack`` is a ``str``
    * an ``int`` indicating which occurrence to find; defaults to ``1``

    >>> find_nth("foo", "o", 1)
    1
    >>> find_nth("foo", "o", 2)
    2
    >>> find_nth("foo", "o", 3)
    -1
    >>> find_nth("foo", "b")
    -1
    >>> import re
    >>> either_o = re.compile("[oO]")
    >>> find_nth("foo", either_o, 1)
    1
    >>> find_nth("FOO", either_o, 1)
    1
    """
    if (hasattr(needle, 'finditer')):
        matches = needle.finditer(haystack)
    else:
        matches = re.finditer(re.escape(needle), haystack)
    start_here = itertools.dropwhile(lambda x: x[0] < n, enumerate(matches, 1))
    try:
        return next(start_here)[1].start()
    except StopIteration:
        return -1

from re import finditer
from itertools import dropwhile
needle='an'
haystack='bananabanana'
n=2
next(dropwhile(lambda x: x[0]<n, enumerate(re.finditer(needle,haystack))))[1].start()

>>> s="abcdefabcdefababcdef"
>>> j=0
>>> for n,i in enumerate(s):
...   if s[n:n+2] =="ab":
...     print n,i
...     j=j+1
...     if j==2: print "2nd occurence at index position: ",n
...
0 a
6 a
2nd occurence at index position:  6
12 a
14 a

import re
indices = [s.start() for s in re.finditer(':', yourstring)]

n = 2
nth_entry = indices[n-1]

num_instances = len(indices)

def iter_find(haystack, needle):
    return [i for i in range(0, len(haystack)) if haystack[i:].startswith(needle)]

>>> iter_find("http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1883980/", '/')
[5, 6, 24, 34, 42]

def findN(s,sub,N,replaceString="XXX"):
    return s.replace(sub,replaceString,N-1).find(sub) - (len(replaceString)-len(sub))*(N-1)

len("substring".join([s for s in ori.split("substring")[:2]]))

c = os.getcwd().split('\')
print '\'.join(c[0:-2])

def Find(String,ToFind,Occurence = 1):
index = 0
count = 0
while index <= len(String):
    try:
        if String[index:index + len(ToFind)] == ToFind:
            count += 1
        if count == Occurence:
               return index
               break
        index += 1
    except IndexError:
        return False
        break
return False

# return -1 if nth substr (0-indexed) d.n.e, else return index
def find_nth(s, substr, n):
    i = 0
    while n >= 0:
        n -= 1
        i = s.find(substr, i + 1)
    return i