java referencing objects in an array

Question

Is there a similar function to indexof() that will search a string array (preferably unsorted) for a string and return it's index? (or maybe ordinate value?)

for example i am trying:

String[] colours= {"Red", "Orange", "Yellow"};

System.out.println("indexOf(Red) = " +
        colours.indexOf("Red"));

...but having no success.

thanks.

AV

ps this will eventually need to work in a 2d array (in case that matters)

Answer 1

String[] colours= {"Red", "Orange", "Yellow", "Green", "Blue", "Violet", "Orange", "Blue"};

Arrays.asList(colours).indexOf("Red"); // 0

OR
if order doesn't matter then

Arrays.sort(colours);   
Arrays.binarySearch(colours,"Red");//binary search takes sorted[natural order] array as input

• List
• Arrays

Answer 2

For sorted arrays you can use Arrays.binarySearch: http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Arrays.html

For unsorted arrays Arrays.asList(array).indexOf("String") will do.

However this last method won't be very efficient as the list is going to be scanned sequentially.

Answer 3

Frankly...

int findString(String[] stringArray;String match) {
  for (i=0;i<stringArray.length;++i) {
    if (match.equals(stringArray[i]) return i;
  }
}

will do you just fine. You could have written that in less time than it took to ask the question.