# Getting the start of line where cursor is?

**URL:** <https://community.silverbullet.md/t/getting-the-start-of-line-where-cursor-is/1910>\
**Category:** Lua\
**Created:** [March 5, 2025, 1:11pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/getting-the-start-of-line-where-cursor-is/1910 "2025-03-05T13:11:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janssen-io](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/janssen-io/32/1155_2.png) [@janssen-io](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/janssen-io)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 9:57am UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/getting-the-start-of-line-where-cursor-is/1910/7 "2025-03-07T09:57:50Z")

</div>

For now, I solved the original issue of this post with the following script:

```lua
function searchBackwards(pattern)
  local pos = editor.getCursor ()
  
  -- get only the text before the cursor
  local pageText = editor.getText():sub(1, pos) 
  
  -- set some defaults to initialize the search
  -- if they are still both 0 by the end, we know no newline was found.
  local matchStart, matchEnd = 0, 0
  
  local searchPos = pos
  while matchStart < 1 and searchPos > 0 do
    -- move the virtual cursor one space to the front
    searchPos = searchPos - 1
  
     -- starting from the new position, check if we can find a newline
    matchStart, matchEnd = pageText:find(pattern, searchPos)
  end

  return matchStart, matchEnd
end

local closestPreviousNewline = searchBackwards("\n")

```

This iteratively checks for a newline between the start of the page and the current cursor position by slowly moving a virtual cursor to the left and checking if it can find a newline from there.

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_[View the full topic](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/getting-the-start-of-line-where-cursor-is/1910)._