Question

A basic chat program I wrote has several key words that generate special actions, images, messages, etc. I store all of the key words and special functions in a HashMap. Key words are the keys and functions are the values. I want to compare user input to the keys with some type of loop. I have tried everything I can think of and nothing works. This is what I can figure out:

myHashMap = <File Input>
for(String currentKey : <List of HashMap Keys>){
    if(user.getInput().equalsIgnoreCase(currentKey)){
        //Do related Value action
    }
}
...

I would appreciate any help. Forgive me if I overlooked a similar question or if the answer is obvious.

Answer 1

Well, you can write:

for(String currentKey : myHashMap.keySet()){

but this isn’t really the best way to use a hash-map.

A better approach is to populate myHashMap with all-lowercase keys, and then write:

theFunction = myHashMap.get(user.getInput().toLowerCase());

to retrieve the function (or null if the user-input does not appear in the map).