I'm uploading a spreadsheet and mapping the spreadsheet column headings to those in my database. The email column is the only one that is required. In StringB below, the `,,,` simply indicates that a column was skipped/ignored. 

The meat of my question is this:

I have a string of text (StringA) comes from a spreadsheet that I need to find in another string of text (StringB) which matches my database (this is not the real values, just made it simple to illustrate my problem so hopefully this is clear).

StringA: `YR,MNTH,ANNIVERSARIES,FIRSTNAME,LASTNAME,EMAIL,NOTES`  

StringB: `,YEAR,,MONTH,LastName,Email,Comments` <-- this list is dynamic 

*MNTH* and *MONTH* are intentionally different;

```
excelColumnList = 'YR,MNTH,ANNIV,FIRST NAME,LAST NAME,EMAIL,NOTES';  
mappedColumnList=  ',YEAR,,MONTH,,First Name,Last Name,Email,COMMENTS';  
mappedColumn= 'Last Name';    

local.index = ListFindNoCase(mappedColumnList, mappedColumn,',', true);

local.returnValue = "";

if ( local.index > 0 )

    local.returnValue = ListGetAt(excelColumnList, local.index);

writedump(local.returnValue);   // dumps "EMAIL" which is wrong

```

The problem I'm having is the index returned when StringB starts with a `,` returns the wrong index value which affects the mapping later. If StringB starts with a word, the process works perfectly. Is there a better way to to get the index when StringB starts with a `,`? 

I also tried using `listtoarray` and then `arraytolist` to clean it up but the index is still off and I cannot reliably just add +1 to the index to identify the correct item in the list.

On the other hand, I was considering this `mappedColumnList = right(mappedColumnList,len(mappedColumnList)-1)` to remove the leading `,` which still throws my index values off BUT I could account for that by adding 1 to the index and this appears to be reliably at first glance. Just concerned this is a sort of hack.

Any advice?

<https://cfdocs.org/listfindnocase>

Here is a cfgist: <https://trycf.com/gist/4b087b40ae4cb4499c2b0ddf0727541b/lucee5?theme=monokai>

UPDATED
I accepted the answer using EDIT #1. I also added a comment here: [Finding specific instance in a list when the list starts with a comma](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51434906/finding-specific-instance-in-a-list-when-the-list-starts-with-a-comma?noredirect=1#comment89873471_51443755)