Comparing a string with an array list to see if the string contains anything from the list

Question

I have an area where a When the string is submitted, I want to check if that string contains anything from an arrayList. For example, in the arrayList I might have the strings "visit" and "enter". The user could enter something like "enter village" or "visit cave". I just want to be able to compare the string to the arrayList to detect for any keywords. If it has keyword from the list, it can act accordingly. The code I have right now looks like this:

if(enterList.contains(text)) //code goes here;

with text being the string the user enters. But the way this works is the opposite of what I want. Its seeing if enterList contains text, not if text contains anything from enterList. Is there any way to see if anything in a string contains anything in a list?

• Shreyos Adikari: What do you mean by text contains anything from enterList?
• Andreas: Try a for loop: for (String word : enterList) if (text.contains(word)) return true; return false;
• Tech Bandit: @ShreyosAdikari what I mean is I want to see if anything in the arrayList is in the string called text. So even if the string is "visit village" and the arrayList only contains a string equal to "visit", it'll detect that text contains something from the list.
• Shreyos Adikari: @TechBandit Got it. Then you have to use for loop as Andreas said.

Answer 1

please try with this First split your string by space into array and compare the array with you list like

String[] splited = text.split("\\s+");
if(Collections.disjoint(yourArray, Arrays.asList(splited ))){
//your logic
}

Answer 2

The following code also gets you the tokens that are present and not simply if any of them are present or not.

List<String> listWords; // List of Words against which checking will happen
String sentence; // Concerned String to check
...
Stream.of(sentence.split("[ |.]"))
 .filter(token -> listWords.contains(token))
 .forEach(System.out::println);

The above just prints the token encountered. You can alter the code as follows for adding further logic.

Stream.of(sentence.split("[ |.]"))
 .filter(token -> listWords.contains(token))
 .forEach(f -> {
 // Your logic here
 });