indexOf Case Sensitive?

Question

Is the indexOf(String) method case sensitive? If so, is there a case insensitive version of it?

Answer 1

Here is my solution which does not allocate any heap memory, therefore it should be significantly faster than most of the other implementations mentioned here.

public static int indexOfIgnoreCase(final String haystack,
                                    final String needle) {
    if (needle.isEmpty() || haystack.isEmpty()) {
        // Fallback to legacy behavior.
        return haystack.indexOf(needle);
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < haystack.length(); ++i) {
        // Early out, if possible.
        if (i + needle.length() > haystack.length()) {
            return -1;
        }

        // Attempt to match substring starting at position i of haystack.
        int j = 0;
        int ii = i;
        while (ii < haystack.length() && j < needle.length()) {
            char c = Character.toLowerCase(haystack.charAt(ii));
            char c2 = Character.toLowerCase(needle.charAt(j));
            if (c != c2) {
                break;
            }
            j++;
            ii++;
        }
        // Walked all the way to the end of the needle, return the start
        // position that this was found.
        if (j == needle.length()) {
            return i;
        }
    }

    return -1;
}

And here are the unit tests that verify correct behavior.

@Test
public void testIndexOfIgnoreCase() {
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("A", "A"), is(0));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("a", "A"), is(0));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("A", "a"), is(0));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("a", "a"), is(0));

    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("a", "ba"), is(-1));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("ba", "a"), is(1));

    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", " Royal Blue"), is(-1));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase(" Royal Blue", "Royal Blue"), is(1));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", "royal"), is(0));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", "oyal"), is(1));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", "al"), is(3));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("", "royal"), is(-1));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", ""), is(0));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", "BLUE"), is(6));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", "BIGLONGSTRING"), is(-1));
    assertThat(StringUtils.indexOfIgnoreCase("Royal Blue", "Royal Blue LONGSTRING"), is(-1));  
}