Detect if string has substring from array of possibilities

Question

Is there a way to check whether a string contains any substring in an array?

Say I have bad_words = ['broccoli', 'cabbage', 'kale'], and my_string = "My shopping list features pizza, gummy bears, kale, and vodka." I want to check whether my_string has any of the bad_words items within it without using a loop/iterator. Is this possible?

It seems like people use Array#index to solve this problem, but I'm not sure how because, in my tests, it only returns true if the entire argument matches an entire item from the array: bad_words.index "kale" returns an index but bad_words.index "no kale" returns nil. So it's no good for substrings.

sawa · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-19 03:55:28Z

1

my_string =~ /\b#{Regexp.union(bad_words)}\b/
#=> 46

will do.

answered Sep 19, 2014 at 3:55

sawa

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1 Comment

GreenTriangle Over a year ago

Clever and effective, I wouldn't have thought of this. Thanks!

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