I am using std::string's find() method to test if a string is a substring of another. Now I need case insensitive version of the same thing. For string comparison I can always turn to stricmp() but there doesn't seem to be a stristr().
I have found various answers and most suggest using Boost which is not an option in my case. Additionally, I need to support std::wstring/wchar_t. Any ideas?
This question is related to
c++
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I love the answers from Kiril V. Lyadvinsky and CC. but my problem was a little more specific than just case-insensitivity; I needed a lazy Unicode-supported command-line argument parser that could eliminate false-positives/negatives when dealing with alphanumeric string searches that could have special characters in the base string used to format alphanum keywords I was searching against, e.g., Wolfjäger shouldn't match jäger but <jäger> should.
It's basically just Kiril/CC's answer with extra handling for alphanumeric exact-length matches.
/* Undefined behavior when a non-alpha-num substring parameter is used. */
bool find_alphanum_string_CI(const std::wstring& baseString, const std::wstring& subString)
{
/* Fail fast if the base string was smaller than what we're looking for */
if (subString.length() > baseString.length())
return false;
auto it = std::search(
baseString.begin(), baseString.end(), subString.begin(), subString.end(),
[](char ch1, char ch2)
{
return std::toupper(ch1) == std::toupper(ch2);
}
);
if(it == baseString.end())
return false;
size_t match_start_offset = it - baseString.begin();
std::wstring match_start = baseString.substr(match_start_offset, std::wstring::npos);
/* Typical special characters and whitespace to split the substring up. */
size_t match_end_pos = match_start.find_first_of(L" ,<.>;:/?\'\"[{]}=+-_)(*&^%$#@!~`");
/* Pass fast if the remainder of the base string where
the match started is the same length as the substring. */
if (match_end_pos == std::wstring::npos && match_start.length() == subString.length())
return true;
std::wstring extracted_match = match_start.substr(0, match_end_pos);
return (extracted_match.length() == subString.length());
}
why not use Boost.StringAlgo:
#include <boost/algorithm/string/find.hpp>
bool Foo()
{
//case insensitive find
std::string str("Hello");
boost::iterator_range<std::string::const_iterator> rng;
rng = boost::ifind_first(str, std::string("EL"));
return rng;
}
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
template <typename charT>
struct ichar {
operator charT() const { return toupper(x); }
charT x;
};
template <typename charT>
static basic_string<ichar<charT> > *istring(basic_string<charT> &s) { return (basic_string<ichar<charT> > *)&s; }
template <typename charT>
static ichar<charT> *istring(const charT *s) { return (ichar<charT> *)s; }
int main()
{
string s = "The STRING";
wstring ws = L"The WSTRING";
cout << istring(s)->find(istring("str")) << " " << istring(ws)->find(istring(L"wstr")) << endl;
}
A little bit dirty, but short & fast.
The new C++11 style:
#include <algorithm>
#include <string>
#include <cctype>
/// Try to find in the Haystack the Needle - ignore case
bool findStringIC(const std::string & strHaystack, const std::string & strNeedle)
{
auto it = std::search(
strHaystack.begin(), strHaystack.end(),
strNeedle.begin(), strNeedle.end(),
[](char ch1, char ch2) { return std::toupper(ch1) == std::toupper(ch2); }
);
return (it != strHaystack.end() );
}
Explanation of the std::search can be found on cplusplus.com.
If you want “real” comparison according to Unicode and locale rules, use ICU’s Collator class.
wxWidgets has a very rich string API wxString
it can be done with (using the case conversion way)
int Contains(const wxString& SpecProgramName, const wxString& str)
{
wxString SpecProgramName_ = SpecProgramName.Upper();
wxString str_ = str.Upper();
int found = SpecProgramName.Find(str_);
if (wxNOT_FOUND == found)
{
return 0;
}
return 1;
}
Since you're doing substring searches (std::string) and not element (character) searches, there's unfortunately no existing solution I'm aware of that's immediately accessible in the standard library to do this.
Nevertheless, it's easy enough to do: simply convert both strings to upper case (or both to lower case - I chose upper in this example).
std::string upper_string(const std::string& str)
{
string upper;
transform(str.begin(), str.end(), std::back_inserter(upper), toupper);
return upper;
}
std::string::size_type find_str_ci(const std::string& str, const std::string& substr)
{
return upper(str).find(upper(substr) );
}
This is not a fast solution (bordering into pessimization territory) but it's the only one I know of off-hand. It's also not that hard to implement your own case-insensitive substring finder if you are worried about efficiency.
Additionally, I need to support std::wstring/wchar_t. Any ideas?
tolower/toupper in locale will work on wide-strings as well, so the solution above should be just as applicable (simple change std::string to std::wstring).
[Edit] An alternative, as pointed out, is to adapt your own case-insensitive string type from basic_string by specifying your own character traits. This works if you can accept all string searches, comparisons, etc. to be case-insensitive for a given string type.
Why not just convert both strings to lowercase before you call find()?
Notice:
Also make sense to provide Boost version: This will modify original strings.
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>
string str1 = "hello world!!!";
string str2 = "HELLO";
boost::algorithm::to_lower(str1)
boost::algorithm::to_lower(str2)
if (str1.find(str2) != std::string::npos)
{
// str1 contains str2
}
or using perfect boost xpression library
#include <boost/xpressive/xpressive.hpp>
using namespace boost::xpressive;
....
std::string long_string( "very LonG string" );
std::string word("long");
smatch what;
sregex re = sregex::compile(word, boost::xpressive::icase);
if( regex_match( long_string, what, re ) )
{
cout << word << " found!" << endl;
}
In this example you should pay attention that your search word don't have any regex special characters.
Source: Stackoverflow.com