How to search a String in a List in Java?

In this section, we will show you how to search a string in a List in Java. We can use .contains(), .startsWith() or .matches() to search for a string in ArrayList.

Java 8 Example

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("India");
        list.add("USA");
        list.add("Japan");
        list.add("Brazil");
        list.add("Israel");

        //.contains example
        List<String> result1 = list
                .stream()
                .filter(x -> x.contains("India"))
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

        System.out.println(result1);

        //.startsWith example
        List<String> result2 = list
                .stream()
                .filter(x -> x.startsWith("I"))
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

        System.out.println(result2);

        //.matches example
        List<String> result3 = list
                .stream()
                .filter(x -> x.matches("(?i)b.*"))
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

        System.out.println(result3);

    }
}

Console Output:

[India]
[India, Israel]
[Brazil]

Old style

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("India");
        list.add("USA");
        list.add("Japan");
        list.add("Brazil");
        list.add("Israel");

        List<String> result = new ArrayList<>();
        for (String s : list) {
            if (s.contains("India")) {
                result.add(s);
            }

            //startsWith
            if (s.startsWith("I")) {
                result.add(s);
            }

            //regex
            if (s.matches("(?i)j.*")) {
                result.add(s);
            }

        }

        System.out.println(result);
    }
}