Better way to find index of item in ArrayList?

Question

For an Android app, I have the following functionality

private ArrayList _categories; // eg [\"horses\",\"camels\"[,etc]]

private int getCateg         


        

Answer 1

ArrayList has a indexOf() method. Check the API for more, but here's how it works:

private ArrayList _categories; // Initialize all this stuff

private int getCategoryPos(String category) {
  return _categories.indexOf(category);
}

indexOf() will return exactly what your method returns, fast.