While in general I would not think any ColdFusion function is useless, I've never really thought much of structFind(). StructFind simply returned value of a structure's key. To me - this seemed silly. If you wanted the value of the key - why wouldn't you just get it?
<cfset s = structNew()>
<cfset s.name = "Paris Hilton">
<cfset s.gender = "female">
<cfset s.iq = 9 * randRange(1,10) * -1>
<!--- silly! --->
<cfoutput>#structFind(s, "name")#</cfoutput>
<!--- not so silly! --->
<cfoutput>#s.iq#</cfoutput>
Now one could make the point that it would be useful in cases where you don't know the key until runtime, but then you would just use bracket notation:
<!--- still not silly! --->
<cfset key = "gender">
<cfoutput>#s[key]#</cfoutput>
But yesterday on the cfaussie listserv, Mark Mandel shared an interesting, and useful, well, use for the function. I quote him here:
I use StructFind() a lot - simply because I tend to encapsulate struct's behind getter's and setters quite regualrly.So Inside a CFC you would find me writing:
<cfset thisValue = StructFind(getStruct(), key)>
As ColdFusion doesn't support syntax like:
<cfset thisValue = getStruct()[key]>
Interesting! Has anyone else use the function like this? (Or in some other way?)