Case insensitive std::string.find()

You could use std::search with a custom predicate.

#include <locale>
#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
using namespace std;

// templated version of my_equal so it could work with both char and wchar_t
template<typename charT>
struct my_equal {
    my_equal( const std::locale& loc ) : loc_(loc) {}
    bool operator()(charT ch1, charT ch2) {
        return std::toupper(ch1, loc_) == std::toupper(ch2, loc_);
    }
private:
    const std::locale& loc_;
};

// find substring (case insensitive)
template<typename T>
int ci_find_substr( const T& str1, const T& str2, const std::locale& loc = std::locale() )
{
    typename T::const_iterator it = std::search( str1.begin(), str1.end(), 
        str2.begin(), str2.end(), my_equal<typename T::value_type>(loc) );
    if ( it != str1.end() ) return it - str1.begin();
    else return -1; // not found
}

int main(int arc, char *argv[]) 
{
    // string test
    std::string str1 = "FIRST HELLO";
    std::string str2 = "hello";
    int f1 = ci_find_substr( str1, str2 );

    // wstring test
    std::wstring wstr1 = L"ОПЯТЬ ПРИВЕТ";
    std::wstring wstr2 = L"привет";
    int f2 = ci_find_substr( wstr1, wstr2 );

    return 0;
}

The new C++11 style:

#include <algorithm>
#include <string>
#include <cctype>

/// Try to find in the Haystack the Needle - ignore case
bool findStringIC(const std::string & strHaystack, const std::string & strNeedle)
{
  auto it = std::search(
    strHaystack.begin(), strHaystack.end(),
    strNeedle.begin(),   strNeedle.end(),
    [](char ch1, char ch2) { return std::toupper(ch1) == std::toupper(ch2); }
  );
  return (it != strHaystack.end() );
}

Explanation of the std::search can be found on cplusplus.com.

Why not just convert both strings to lowercase before you call find()?

tolower

Notice:

• Inefficient for long strings.
• Beware of internationalization issues.