How do I check if a string is a substring of another string in Go?
For example, I want to check someString.contains("something")
.
Asked
Active
Viewed 2.3e+01k times
229

Elliott Beach
- 10,459
- 9
- 28
- 41
2 Answers
374
Use the function Contains
from the strings package.
import (
"strings"
)
strings.Contains("something", "some") // true

John Silence
- 558
- 5
- 14

Elliott Beach
- 10,459
- 9
- 28
- 41
64
To compare, there are more options:
import (
"fmt"
"regexp"
"strings"
)
const (
str = "something"
substr = "some"
)
// 1. Contains
res := strings.Contains(str, substr)
fmt.Println(res) // true
// 2. Index: check the index of the first instance of substr in str, or -1 if substr is not present
i := strings.Index(str, substr)
fmt.Println(i) // 0
// 3. Split by substr and check len of the slice, or length is 1 if substr is not present
ss := strings.Split(str, substr)
fmt.Println(len(ss)) // 2
// 4. Check number of non-overlapping instances of substr in str
c := strings.Count(str, substr)
fmt.Println(c) // 1
// 5. RegExp
matched, _ := regexp.MatchString(substr, str)
fmt.Println(matched) // true
// 6. Compiled RegExp
re = regexp.MustCompile(substr)
res = re.MatchString(str)
fmt.Println(res) // true
Benchmarks:
Contains
internally calls Index
, so the speed is almost the same (btw Go 1.11.5 showed a bit bigger difference than on Go 1.14.3).
BenchmarkStringsContains-4 100000000 10.5 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkStringsIndex-4 117090943 10.1 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkStringsSplit-4 6958126 152 ns/op 32 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkStringsCount-4 42397729 29.1 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkStringsRegExp-4 461696 2467 ns/op 1326 B/op 16 allocs/op
BenchmarkStringsRegExpCompiled-4 7109509 168 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op

Nik
- 2,885
- 2
- 25
- 25
-
I wonder why golang put `Contains` func in strings but not string? It should be more convenient to write `aString.Contains(str)` – Andrew Nov 25 '22 at 02:53
-
string is not an object in Golang, it cannot have methods, in contract to other high level programming languages – Nik Nov 25 '22 at 16:28
-
But it can define something like `func (* string) Contains(substr string)`? – Andrew Nov 25 '22 at 16:33
-
1I figured it out. string is neither an object nor a struct. – Andrew Nov 25 '22 at 16:46