Java String Contains Example

Nikos MaravitsasMarch 12th, 2014Last Updated: March 12th, 2014

0 102 1 minute read

In this example we are going to see how you can check if a String contains another String in Java. The Java String Class API offers a method to do that, contains. To be more specific the complete signature of contains method is public boolean contains(CharSequence s). Which means that you are trying to see, whether a CharSequence s resides inside a String. A CharSequence is an interface that denotes a readable sequence of chars. It is used to provide uniformly read-only access to different kinds of char sequences. As you’ve probably seen in the documentation, String class implements CharSequence interface, among others like Serializable and Comparable<String>.

Let’s see how you can use it :

StringContainsExample.java

package com.javacodegeeks.core.string;
 
public class StringContainsExample {
 
    public static void main(String[] args){
 
        System.out.println("abcdefghiklmpo".contains("cde"));
 
    }
}

The above program will check if the string "abcdefghiklmpo" contains the string "cde". It will output:

true

As you might imagine, you can use contains with all other classes that implement CharSequence interface. An example is StringBuilder.

Let’s see how you can use it:

StringContainsExample.java

package com.javacodegeeks.core.string;
 
public class StringContainsExample {
     
    public static void main(String[] args){
         
        StringBuilder sBuilder = new StringBuilder();
         
        sBuilder.append("Java").append(" ").append("Code").append(" ").append("Geeks");
         
        System.out.println("Java Code Geeks are awsome".contains(sBuilder));    
    }
}