CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javastringarraylist
Casper Nørsø
Casper Nørsø

Reputation: 11

Search string in arraylist advanced (Java)

I have used the .equals method to search for a String in an ArrayList, but the user has to write the exact name of the String. Is there a way to show the String that matches the user input containing ? If you for example search for 'Djang' and the String you are trying to find is 'Django'.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 125

Answers (2)

dolan
dolan

Reputation: 1804

You should check out the Levenshtein Distance. It measures how far away a string is from another string. There is even a Java implementation in Wikibooks.

Then, it's a matter of sorting and finding the minimum.

list.stream()
    .sort(Comparator.comparing(
            s -> LevenshteinDistance.computeLevenshteinDistance(s, input))
    .findFirst();

From there, it's also possible to filter to add an upper bound on the acceptable distance to prevent all inputs from returning a result.

list.stream()
    .sort(Comparator.comparing(
            s -> LevenshteinDistance.computeLevenshteinDistance(s, input))
    .filter(s -> LevenshteinDistance.computeLevenshteinDistance(s, input) < limit)
    .findFirst();

Upvotes: 3

Ben Glasser
Ben Glasser

Reputation: 3364

try the String.contains() method

public boolean contains(CharSequence s) Returns true if and only if this string contains the specified sequence of char values.

Parameters: s - the sequence to search for

Returns: true if this string contains s, false otherwise

Throws: NullPointerException - if s is null

Since: 1.5

For example:

String myString = "Django"
public boolean stringCatcher(String userInput) {
    return myString.contains(userInput);
}

then passing Djang to stringCatcher() would result in a true value being returned.

Upvotes: 0

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