asked on

Searching a string for a paticular pattern.

I am writing a method that checked a passed string for a number of patterns, which if detected returns false..

The first method work fine, which checks the start of the string, but when I need to search within the string it fails.

//This works
            //we dont want email addresses so look for email links:
            if(link.startsWith("<a href=\"mailto:"))
            {
                  return false;
                  //this recognises email addresses:
            }//end if

//This method doesn't work
            if(link.indexOf("related-author-search") != -1)
            {
                  return false;

            }

So the second method tries to detect whether the pattern "related-author-search" appears in the passed string, but my program never detects this.

Can anyone offer any insight

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Please post more code

chocobogo

ASKER

     private boolean isValidLink(String link)
      {
            //wether it is a link we want or not:

            //we dont want email addresses so look for email links:
            if(link.startsWith("<a href=\"mailto:"))
            {
                  return false;
                  //this recognises email addresses:

            }//end if

            //we dont want external addresses so make sure starts with base:
            if(! link.startsWith("<a href=\"http://www.billybob/"))
            {
                  return false;

            }//end if

            //need to work out a way to make sure we are not going back up the tree:
            if(link.length() < this.thisFilesURL.length() )
            {
                  //i assume that if the length of the link must be greater
                  // than or equal to that of its parent for it to be
                  // continuning down that branch of the tree,
                  // otherwise i assume it is going to an unrelated page?:
                  return false;

            }//end if

            //make sure we do not follow individual author links, typical one is:

            if(link.indexOf("related-author-search") != -1)
            {
                  return false;

            }//end if

            if(link.indexOf("http:\\www.jillybob") != -1)
            {
                  return false;
            }

            if(link.indexOf("img src=") != -1)
            {
                  return false;
            }//end if

            return true;

      }//end removeInvalidLinks()

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SOLUTION

SergeiKo

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