contains method of String is not working properly [closed]

Answer 1

You can use a regular expression to check if a string contains a word:

if (description.matches(".*\\b"+Pattern.quote(s)+"\\b.*")) {
    ...
}

The anchors \b match a word boundary.

Answer 2

This is another solution, maybe not be the best or more efficient, but works, and shows the power of this libraries. So, you can 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.stringContainsInOrder;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

public class StringContains_03{
        public static void main(String[] args) {
            List<String> source =  Arrays.asList("This time only $FB,$RUG is highest priority".split(" "));
            List<String> patterns = Arrays.asList("$FB","$F");

            boolean patternsExistsInSource = select(source, having(on(String.class), stringContainsInOrder(patterns))).size()>0;
            System.out.println(patternsExistsInSource);//shows: true
            System.out.println(select(source, having(on(String.class), stringContainsInOrder(patterns))));//shows the matches: [$FB,$RUG]
    }
}

Note that only with this line you know if the pattern is in another.

 boolean patternsExistsInSource = select(source, having(on(String.class), stringContainsInOrder(patterns))).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.

NOTE: This will help you assuming you can have alternatives to your code. I hope this will be useful.

(EDITED) Now works too for the case, "This time only $FB,$RUG is highest priority".

Answer 3

It looks like you want to see if a word is contained. You can do this:

Set<String> words = new HashSet<String>(Arrays.asList(description.split(" ")));

...
words.contains(s)
...

Answer 4

contains is a well-documented and a (hopefully) well-tested method of an enterprise-level software framework, which (as a rule of thumb) usually means it is working properly.

In this particular case, the contains method is working fine. Your initial string contains $FB, so it also contains $F (and FB and $ and F and B, if you think about it).

Maybe (and I'm making a wild guess) instead you're trying to find what's contained after the last found item. In that case, don't use contains, use indexOf, save the value and then search from that saved value and on.

Edit per request, here is a sample of such code. Note that I haven't tested it, so there may be some checks missing:

     int currentIndex = 0;
     for(String s : list) {
       int foundIndex = description.indexOf(s, currentIndex);
       if(foundIndex >= 0) {
          System.out.println(s);
          currentIndex = foundIndex + 1;
       } 
     }