Case-insensitive collections (sets, maps, etc.)

[Matt]

I have to believe I'm not the first person to have this question.
However, I'm not having any luck finding an answer.

I'm using Java 1.5. Say I have the following:

Set<Stringa = new HashSet<String> ();
Map<String, Objectb = new TreeMap<String, Object>();

Assume somewhere these are populated.

When I check the set for a string using a.contains("bob "), the method is
checking using a case-sensitive search. Similarly, if I did
b.containsKey(" tom"), it's case-sensitive.

Is it possible to get these methods to perform a comparison
case-insensitively? Thus, performing:

a.contains("bob ")
a.contains("BoB ")
a.contains("BOB ")

would all yield the same result?
Thanks for your time. Cheers,

Matt
--

[Laie Techie]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 22:42:08 -0500, Matt wrote:

I have to believe I'm not the first person to have this question.
However, I'm not having any luck finding an answer.

I'm using Java 1.5. Say I have the following:

Set<Stringa = new HashSet<String> ();
Map<String, Objectb = new TreeMap<String, Object>();

Assume somewhere these are populated.

When I check the set for a string using a.contains("bob "), the method is
checking using a case-sensitive search. Similarly, if I did
b.containsKey(" tom"), it's case-sensitive.

Is it possible to get these methods to perform a comparison
case-insensitively?

TreeSet and TreeMap allow you to pass in a Comparator to the constructor.
This Comparator will dictate which objects should be considered equal.
For case-insensitivity, user String.CASE_INS ENSITIVE_ORDER .

Set<Stringset = new TreeSet<String( String.CASE_INS ENSITIVE_ORDER) ;
// now populate the set
Map<String, Objectmap =
new TreeMap<String, Object>(String. CASE_INSENSITIV E_ORDER);
// now populate the map

Please note that neither TreeSet nor TreeMap are synchronized, so you need
to make them thread-safe yourself.

HTH,
La`ie Techie