Check to see if var is in array

Posted by Edward Clayton on July 14, 2022 at 8:10 pm

I’m working on an expression to determine the type (lowercase, uppercase, number, symbol) of the last character in a string.

Right now I’m doing something like this

par = parent.text.sourceText;
src = par.charAt(par.length-1);
lib = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z"];
libNum = ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "0", "-", "/", ":", ";", "(", ")", "$", "&", "@", '"', '“', '”', ".", ",", "?", "!", "'", "’"];
libSym = ["[", "]", "{", "}", "#", "%", "^", "*", "+", "=", "_", "\\", "|", "~", "<", ">", "€", "£", "¥", "•"];
if (src == " ") {
	1
} else {
	for (i=0;i<lib.length;i++) {
	if (src == lib[i]) {
		2
		break
	} else if (src == lib[i].toUpperCase()) {
		3
		break
	} else {
		for (n=0;n<libNum.length;n++) {
			if (src == libNum[n]) {
				4
				break
			} else {
				for (s=0;s<libSym.length;s++) {
					if (src == libSym[s]) {
						5
						break
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
}
}

This technically works, but I was wondering if there is a more efficient way to do this. This is quite slow as it requires nesting for loops within for loops.

Michael Hunter replied 3 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies

3 Replies

Dan Ebberts

July 14, 2022 at 8:26 pm

If you’re using the JavaScript expression engine, you can improve things a lot by using array.includes():

par = parent.text.sourceText;
src = par.charAt(par.length-1);
lib = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z"];
libNum = ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "0", "-", "/", ":", ";", "(", ")", "$", "&", "@", '"', '“', '”', ".", ",", "?", "!", "'", "’"];
libSym = ["[", "]", "{", "}", "#", "%", "^", "*", "+", "=", "_", "\\", "|", "~", "<", ">", "€", "£", "¥", "•"];
if (src == " ") {
	1;
}else if (lib.includes(src)){
	2;
}else if (lib.includes(src.toLowerCase())){
	3;
}else if (libNum.includes(src)){
	4;
}else if (libSym.includes(src)){
	5;
}else{ // just in case
	6;
}

Edward Clayton
July 14, 2022 at 9:10 pm

Perfect, thank you!
Michael Hunter
July 14, 2022 at 11:00 pm

I like dan’s code. If distinct you can also create a strings a libraries and switch on charindex(input)

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Check to see if var is in array