str.find() not returning correct index.

[bowlofred]

Hmm. I'm not sure what's going on then. I wonder if the file is in some odd encoding that your editor is handling automatically?

If you're looking for the "aHR..." string, then your python program (with a couple tiny updates) works for me. I've saved your upload in a text file.

Output:
$ cat ascii.txt
-----ASCII ENCODED DATA-------
=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL2dldEdKTGV2ZWxzMjEucGhw#lvl_dataaHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL2dldFNhdmVEYXRhLnBocA==&page=%i&secret=%saHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL2dldEdKTWFwUGFja3MyMS5waHA=pack_%igauntlet_%iget_gauntlets&secret=%saHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL2dldEdKR2F1bnRsZXRzMjEucGhw&gauntlet=%i_%i&levelID=%i&inc=%i&extras=%i&secret=%s&rs=%i%i%s%i%s%i%s&chk=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL2Rvd25sb2FkR0pMZXZlbDIyLnBocA==%i,%i,%i,%i,%i,%i,%i,%i&levelID=%i&gameVersion=%i&secret=%sgeometry.ach.rateDiff&levelID=%i&stars=%i&secret=%ssg6pUrt0J58281aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL3JhdGVHSlN0YXJzMjExLnBocA==1128989

And then this program:

b64link = "aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ib29tbGluZ3MuY29tL2RhdGFiYXNlL2Rvd25sb2FkR0pMZXZlbDIyLnBocA=="
with open("ascii.txt", 'r', encoding="ascii") as f:
    t = f.read()
    if(b64link in t):
        location = t.find(b64link)
        print(location)

Generates this output:

Output:
456

That's zero-indexed. If I open the text file in vi and goto 457, that puts me right on the the string.

---

Obviously we could be trying to decode the base64 bits, but that doesn't seem to be what you're trying to do.