Starting point, direction, and extent of search

You can control the starting point, direction, and extent of the search by using one of these operands:

NEXT: The scan starts at the first position after the current cursor location and searches ahead to find the next occurrence of the string. NEXT is the default.
ALL: The scan starts at the top of the data and searches ahead to find all occurrences of the string. A message in the upper-right corner of the screen shows the number of occurrences found. The second-level message that is displayed when you enter the HELP command shows which columns were searched.
FIRST: The scan starts at the top of the data and searches ahead to find the first occurrence of the string.
LAST: The scan starts at the bottom of the data and searches backward to find the last occurrence of the string.
PREV: The scan starts at the first position before the current cursor location and searches backward to find the previous occurrence of the string.

If you specify FIRST, ALL, or NEXT, the direction of the search is forward; pressing the RFIND function key (F5/17) finds the next occurrence of the designated string. If you specify LAST or PREV, the direction of the search is backward; pressing the RFIND function key finds the previous occurrence of the string. The other optional operands remain in effect, as specified in the last FIND command. These operands include CHARS, WORD, PREFIX, SUFFIX, and left_col, right_col.

The search proceeds until one or all occurrences of the string are found, or until the end of data is found. If the string is not found, one of these actions takes place:

If the FIND command was entered on the Command line, a NO string FOUND message is displayed in the upper-right corner of the screen.
If the FIND command was repeated using the RFIND command, either a BOTTOM OF DATA REACHED message or a TOP OF DATA REACHED message is displayed, depending on the direction of the search. When these messages appear, you can press the RFIND function key again to continue the search by wrapping to the top or bottom of the data. If the string is still not found anywhere in the data, a NO string FOUND message is displayed.