CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
Don P
Don P

Reputation: 63567

Check if a string contains any substrings from an array

I want to check if any elements in this array words = ["foo", "bar", "spooky", "rick james"] are substrings of the phrase sentence = "something spooky this way comes".

Return true if there is any match, false if not.

My current solution (works but probably inefficient, I'm still learning Ruby):

is_there_a_substring = false
words.each do |word|
  if sentence.includes?(word)
    is_there_a_substring = true
    break
  end
end
return is_there_a_substring

Upvotes: 9

Views: 7003

Answers (2)

Paige Ruten
Paige Ruten

Reputation: 176645

Your solution is efficient, it's just not as expressive as Ruby allows you to be. Ruby provides the Enumerable#any? method to express what you are doing with that loop:

words.any? { |word| sentence.include?(word) }

Upvotes: 23

Stefan
Stefan

Reputation: 114138

Another option is to use a regular expression:

 if Regexp.union(words) =~ sentence
   # ...
 end

Upvotes: 5

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