Question

I have a group of strings in Javascript and I need to write a function that detects if another specific string belongs to this group or not.

What is the fastest way to achieve this? Is it alright to put the group of values into an array, and then write a function that searches through the array?

I think if I keep the values sorted and do a binary search, it should work fast enough. Or is there some other smart way of doing this, which can work faster?

Answer 1

Use a hash table, and do this:

// Initialise the set  mySet = {};  // Add to the set  mySet['some string value'] = true;  ...  // Test if a value is in the set:  if (testValue in mySet) {      alert(testValue + ' is in the set'); } else {      alert(testValue + ' is not in the set'); }