is there a function in CF similar to javascript's indexOf method? i wanted to do server side validation but the Adobe CF book vol 1 doesnt go over much server side validation w/ cfif blocks.

something like find()? it will search for the occurrence of a string.

If you have ColdFusion installed on your local machine, here is a complete list of functions available to you:
http://localhost/CFDOCS/htmldocs/help.html...ons-pt0_01.html

Obviously, you can replace "localhost" with your ColdFusion web server.