Question

List<String> cursewords = new ArrayList<String>();
cursewords.add("darn it");
cursewords.add("gosh");
cursewords.add("gee whiz");
cursewords.add("golly");

String text = " Golly ";

if (cursewords.contains(text.trim().toLowerCase())  {
    System.out.println("found curse:" + text);
}

Is there a better way to do this?

My filter is not catching things it needs to.

Answer 1

Your filter will currently only work if text is identical to one of the entries in cursewords (with no other characters at all). To fix it, you need to instead iterate through the items in cursewords and check to see if text contains it.

Here’s a simple example (uses an enhanced for loop):

// Convert the string to lowercase here, instead of within the loop
string lowerCaseText = text.toLowerCase();

for (String curse : cursewords) {
    if (lowerCaseText.contains(curse)) {
       System.out.println("found curse:" + curse);
    }
}

Although as others have mentioned, it would probably be better to use regular expressions to account for variations in curses and avoid clbuttic mistakes.