Does String.startsWith() support multiple string?

[Jack Bush]

Hi All,

I am currently having to use a number of separate ( String.startsWith("apple") || String.startsWith("orange") || String.startsWith("grape") .....) as opposed to the following regular expression:

if (String.startsWith("(?:apple|orange|grape|...)") which doesn't work.

Any suggestion?

Thanks a lot,

Jack

[john price]

String whichStringDoesItContain = null;
String[] stringArray = {"grape", "apple", "orange"};

for (String string = stringArray) {
if (stringYouAreWantingToCheck.startsWith(string)) {
whichStringDoesItContain = string;
break;
}
}

if (whichStringDoesItContain != null) {
System.out.println("There was a math - " + whichStringDoesItContain));
}
else {
System.out.println("There was not a match");
}

John Price

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

@john:syntax error in your for loop!

[Rob Spoor]

If you only want to check for the presence, instead of also retrieving the value, you can use a regular expression in combination with String.matches. Check out the Javadoc page of java.util.regex.Pattern for more information. Don't forget to let your regex end with ".*", because String.matches looks for a match of the entire String.

[Jack Bush]

Hi Rob,

String.matches("(?:apple|orange|grape).*")

works as suggested.

Thank you,

Jack

[Rob Spoor]

You're welcome.