Finding "not a" in a list

It's easy to find "b" in a list that looks like ["a","a","a","b","a","a","a"] using llListFindList. What if I don't care what "b" is, but I want to find the index of the element that is not "a"? Is there a more elegant way to do it than by looping through the list like this? ........

default
{
	touch_start(integer total_number)
	{
		list items = ["a","a","a","b","a","a","a"];
		integer len = llGetListLength(items)-1;
		llOwnerSay((string)llListFindList(items,["b"])); //This finds "b" directly
		
		string match = llList2String(items,len);
//In this small test, I know that the last element in the list is "a", so let's find "not a"
		while (len--)
		{
			llOwnerSay("Position = "+(string)len+"   Value = "+llList2String(items, len));
			if(llList2String(items,len) != match)
			{
				integer pos = len;
				llOwnerSay("Mismatch found at postion "+(string)pos); // Here it is!
			}
		}
	}
}

Don't think so. Just use a loop.

Thanks. That's what I figured. I was just hoping there was some nifty shortcut like llListFindList(items,llNotInList(["a"]) ) or llFindNotInList(items, ["a"]).

integer uLstNotBeg( list vLstSrc, list vLstNot ){
  return
  llListFindList( vLstSrc,
    (list)llListt2String( 
      llParseString2List( 
        llDumpList2String( vLstSrc, ";" ),
        vLstNot + (list)";", [] ),
      0 )  );
}

no testing, but I think that's the right logic for not...

dumps the list, rebuilds it w/o your Not elements, then grabs the first element of that new list and looks for it in the original to get the index.

only works for strings, Not can only be up to 7 elements, which will exclude each element separately. suggest replacing ";" with the alt+7 character. use -1 instead of 0 if you want the last Not.

ETA:
note it's quicker to actually get the value if you don't actually need the index, simply rebuild the list without your excluded element, which if looped by replacing the not with the first element can get you all the unique elements... and only use the above for potentially large lists

*watches the wizards at work*

Ah, now THAT's the sort of magic I was hoping for. Thanks, Void!

just realized that -1 will probably won't work for the last Not, but applying the find reverse I have posted to the forum and my wiki page, will (it mightn't work because there's no guarantee that the last Not element is unique)

Err...okay. That's better than a simple loop?

Let them play, don't spoil the fun

A simple loop works just fine, but gee ...... anybody can do a simple loop. Where's the fun in that?

I CAN'T!

depends on how big the list is =P

for a large list it's potentially faster... not that I did any averaging tests or anything, I wrote it in the reply. if there are a lot of "not" values (or the ones fed in cover most of the entries) it should be more effecient processing wise. dunno how it compares bytecode-wise.