Question

Sorry if this is a repeat, but I’ve been looking for an answer to this question, but I can’t find one anywhere and my last question was for the same code but with a different problem.

I need to find a string inside an array, but all the Strings in the array are 16 characters long and the search key will not be 16 characters when entered by the user. Every attempt I’ve made at this thus far has ended with the String not being found, though I know it is in the array. I think it has something to do with the trailing spaces after the actual string text in the array, but I’m not sure how to handle it.

This is my search statement so far. I’ll note that my compareTo() statement does compare this.name to other.name, so I’m quite confused.:

case 'b':
      System.out.println();
      System.out.println("Please enter a customer name:");

      String search = kb.nextLine(); //read the user's search
      int place; //location of result

      Arrays.sort(A);

      Customer searchCust = new Customer(search);

      place = Arrays.binarySearch(A,searchCust);

      if (place <= 0)
        System.out.println("Cannot find customer named " + search);
     else
     {
       System.out.println("Customer found:");  
       System.out.println(A[place-1]);
        break;


 public int compareTo(Customer a)
 {
  return this.name.compareTo(a.name);
 }   //end compareTo

Answer 1

Edit: after clarification of the question.

So, the problem is that your users are entering something like

"Smith"

but your array elements are always padded to 16-characters long and might have the search term somewhere in the middle, like

"John Smith      "

then I would recommend just looping through the array and doing a .contains() on each element.

Binary search is an optimization which I would only consider if performance shows itself to be a problem, because it introduces quite a lot of complication.