Checking if a string contains any of the strings in an array

Question

Without for () loops such as

 for(int j =0; j < array.length; j++)
 {
}

I want to be able to check if a string contains any of the strings in an array globally. So for() loops don't work.

I have tried

int arraylength;
while(arraylength < array.length()){
arraylength++; }
if(string.contains(array[arraylength]) {}

but this returns an error.

edit:

To clear it up:

I want to do something like

if (string.contains(**code that checks all strings in an array**)

So I can check if string contains any of the strings in an array. As I have mentioned, for loops DO NOT work because I want to be able to execute the line of code above ANYWHERE in the class.

• Sotirios Delimanolis: Loops will have to be used somewhere. You can use while but not for?
• Jon Skeet: What exactly do you mean by "globally" here? Your question is very unclear.
• joe dacoolguy: Thanks for the very constructive&helping answer Luiggi.
• asimes: @joe dacoolguy, Luiggi Mendoza is right, there is no reason that a for loop would not work. Also, if that is all the code the while loop is doing, then that should instead be arraylength = array.length() Edit: By instead be I mean that instead of having a while loop just assign arraylength the value it would have at the end of the while loop

Answer 1

You can do it like this:

String veryHugeString = ...;
String[] words = new String[] { ... };
boolean foundAtLeastOne = false;
for (String word : words) {
 if (veryHugeString.indexOf(word) > 0) {
 foundAtLeastOne = true;
 System.out.println("Word: " + word + " is found");
 break;
 }
}
System.out.println("Found at least one : " + foundAtLeastOne);

Answer 2

Try use lambdaj (download here,website) and hamcrest (download here,website), this libraries are very powerfull for managing collections, the following code is very simple and works perfectly:

import static ch.lambdaj.Lambda.having;
import static ch.lambdaj.Lambda.on;
import static ch.lambdaj.Lambda.select;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.containsString;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
public class Test2 {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
 List<String> list = Arrays.asList("A","BB","DCA","D","x");
 String strTofind = "C";
 System.out.println("List: " + list.toString());
 boolean match = select(list, having(on(String.class), containsString(strTofind))).size()>0;
 System.out.println("The string " + strTofind + (!match?" not":"") + " exists");
 strTofind = "X";
 match = select(list, having(on(String.class), containsString(strTofind))).size()>0;
 System.out.println("The string " + strTofind + (!match?" not":"") + " exists"); 
 }
}

This shows:

List: [A, BB, DCA, D, x]
The string C exists
The string X not exists

Basically, in one line you can search the string is in any strinf of the array:

boolean match = select(list, having(on(String.class), containsString(strTofind))).size()>0;

With this libraries you can solve your problem in one line. You must add to your project: hamcrest-all-1.3.jar and lambdaj-2.4.jar Hope this will be useful.

Note: in my example i use a List then if you want use an array: Arrays.asList(array) (array is string[])

Answer 3

For loop:

for (String search : array) {
 if (message.contains(search)) {
 return true;
 }
}
return false;

Lambdas:

return Arrays.stream(array).anyMatch(message::contains);

Answer 4

Give this a try

String longString = "This is a string.";
String[] stringArray = new String[]{"apple", "ball", "This", "cat"};
int index = 0;
while(index <stringArray.length){
 if(longString.contains(stringArray[index])){
 System.out.println("found: "+stringArray[index]);
 }
 index++;
}