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

If your List is sorted and has good random access (as ArrayList does), you should look into Collections.binarySearch. Otherwise, you should use List.indexOf, as others have pointed out.

But your algorithm is sound, fwiw (other than the == others have pointed out).