How to know if a given string is substring from another string in Java

Question

Hi I have to compute if a given string is substring of a bigger string. For example

String str = \"Hallo my world\";
String substr = \"my\"

<

Answer 1

Consider the following code:

If substring is present then it returns the start index of substring in a given string

Else returns -1

public static int isSubstring(String str, String pattern)
{
    int str_length = str.length();
    int pattern_length = pattern.length();

    for (int i = 0; i <= str_length - pattern_length; i++)
    {
        int j;

        for (j = 0; j < pattern_length; j++)
            if (str.charAt(i + j) != pattern.charAt(j))
                break;

        if (j == pattern_length)
            return i;
    }
    return -1;
}

Answer 2

String.indexOf(substr) complexity is O(n2).. Luixv asked a cheaper solution.. But as far as , I know there is no better algorithm than current one.

Answer 3

public static boolean isSubstring(String s1, String s2){
    if(s1.length()<s2.length()) return false;
    if(s1.length()==s2.length()) return s1.equals(s2);
    for(int i=0;i<=s1.length()-s2.length();i++){
        if(s1.charAt(i)==s2.charAt(0)){
            int matchLength=1;
            for(int j=1;j<s2.length();j++){
                if(s1.charAt(i+j)!=s2.charAt(j)){
                    break;
                }
                matchLength++;
            }
            if(matchLength==s2.length()) return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

This checks if s2 is a substring of s1.

Answer 4

use indexOf it will return -1 if no match (contains was added in 1.5, maybe you are using older jdk?) see "contains(CharSequence s)" method in String class in JDK 1.4.2 for details

Answer 5

    public boolean isSubString(String smallStr, String largerStr) {
    char[] larger = largerStr.toCharArray();
    char[] smaller = smallStr.toCharArray();

    int i = 0;

    for (int j = 0; j < larger.length; j++) {
        if(larger[j] == smaller[i]){
            if(i == smaller.length -1){
                //done we found that this string is substring
                return true;
            }
            i++;
            continue;
        }else{
            if(i > 0){
                //that means we encountered a duplicate character before and if string was substring 
                // it shouldn't have hit this condition..
                if(larger.length - j >= smaller.length){
                    i = 0;
                    //reset i here because there are still more characters to check for substring..
                }else{
                    //we don't have enough characters to check for substring.. so done..
                    return false;
                }

            }
        }

    }

    return false;
}

Answer 6

    String str1 = "Java8 makes Java more powerful";
    String str2 = "Java";
    char c;
    char d;
    int count=0;
    boolean match = true;
    for (int i = 0; i < str1.length(); i++) {
        c = str1.charAt(i);
        for (int j = 0; j < str2.length(); j++) {
            d = str2.charAt(j);
            if (c == d) {
                match = true;
                count++;
                if(count== str2.length()){
                    i = str1.length();
                    break;
                }
                i++;
                c = str1.charAt(i);
            } else {
                match = false;
            }   
        }
    }

    if(match == true){
        System.out.println("SubString ");
    }