Beginning Programming All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 3

String Searching

IN THIS CHAPTER

Searching text sequentially

Searching by using regular expressions

Searching strings phonetically

Searching for data is one of the most common functions in writing a computer program. Most searching algorithms focus on searching a list of values, such as numbers or names. However, there’s another specialized type of searching, which involves searching text.

Searching text poses unique problems. Although you can treat text as one long list of characters, you aren’t necessarily searching for a discrete value, like the number 21 or the last name Smith. Instead, you may need to search a long list of text for a specific word or phrase, such as ant or cat food. Not only do you need to find a specific word or phrase, but you also may need to find that same word or phrase multiple times. Because of these differences, computer scientists have created a variety of searching algorithms specifically tailored for searching text.

Computers only recognize and manipulate numbers, so every computer represents characters as a universally recognized numeric ...