Etiquette advice: read suggestions carefully before ranting.

The OP isn't asking for the total number of matches. He rather wants to get the "actual token number" aka positition of the first match (without nesting in a findtok). Another example:
Code:
//var %t = abc def bcd cde | echo -a First token containing "cd": $findtok(%t,$matchtok(%t,cd,1,32),32)