Searching the first few characters of every word within a string in C#

Question

I am new to programming languages. I have a requirement where I have to return a record based on a search string.

For example, take the following three records and a search string of "Cal":

1. University of California

2. Pascal Institute

3. California University

I've tried String.Contains, but all three are returned. If I use String.StartsWith, I get only record #3. My requirement is to return #1 and #3 in the result.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

I like this for simplicity:

if(str.StartsWith("Cal") || str.Contains(" Cal")){
    //do something
}

Answer 2

If you're using .NET 3.5 or higher, I'd recommend using the LINQ extension methods. Check out String.Split and Enumerable.Any. Something like:

string myString = "University of California";
bool included = myString.Split(' ').Any(w => w.StartsWith("Cal"));

Split divides myString at the space characters and returns an array of strings. Any works on the array, returning true if any of the strings starts with "Cal".

If you don't want to or can't use Any, then you'll have to manually loop through the words.

string myString = "University of California";
bool included = false;

foreach (string word in myString.Split(' '))
{
    if (word.StartsWith("Cal"))
    {
        included = true;
        break;
    }
}

Answer 3

You can try:

foreach(var str in stringInQuestion.Split(' '))
{
  if(str.StartsWith("Cal"))
   {
      //do something
   }
}

Answer 4

You can use Regular expressions to find the matches. Here is an example

    //array of strings to check
    String[] strs = {"University of California", "Pascal Institute", "California University"};
    //create the regular expression to look for 
    Regex regex = new Regex(@"Cal\w*");
    //create a list to hold the matches
    List<String> myMatches = new List<String>();
    //loop through the strings
    foreach (String s in strs)
    {   //check for a match
        if (regex.Match(s).Success)
        {   //add to the list
            myMatches.Add(s);
        }
    }

    //loop through the list and present the matches one at a time in a message box
    foreach (String matchItem in myMatches)
    {
            MessageBox.Show(matchItem + " was a match");
    }

Answer 5

        string univOfCal = "University of California";
        string pascalInst = "Pascal Institute";
        string calUniv = "California University";

        string[] arrayofStrings = new string[] 
        {
        univOfCal, pascalInst, calUniv
        };

        string wordToMatch = "Cal";
        foreach (string i in arrayofStrings)
        {

            if (i.Contains(wordToMatch)){

             Console.Write(i + "\n");
            }
        }
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

Answer 6

var strings = new List<string> { "University of California", "Pascal Institute", "California University" };
var matches = strings.Where(s => s.Split(' ').Any(x => x.StartsWith("Cal")));

foreach (var match in matches)
{
    Console.WriteLine(match);
}

Output:

University of California
California University

Answer 7

This is actually a good use case for regular expressions.

string[] words = 
{ 
    "University of California",
    "Pascal Institute",
    "California University"
}

var expr = @"\bcal";
var opts = RegexOptions.IgnoreCase;
var matches = words.Where(x => 
    Regex.IsMatch(x, expr, opts)).ToArray();

The "\b" matches any word boundary (punctuation, space, etc...).