Fastest String Search

[KeysCoder]

I'm working on an application which needs to search through every word in a rich text box and match individual words and phrases to those in a database. I'm thinking it would be faster to save the text to a string class first and search through it rather than through the rich text box itself.

Am I right? How about the StringBuilder class? I know it's very fast for manipulating a string but would it be any faster (than the plain string class) for searches?

 

[jmcilhinney]

You don't search a RichTextBox. You search its Text property, which is already a String object. If you're looking for whole words then you may as well just use String.IndexOf or else the Regex class can find all occurrences in one method call.

 

[cjard]

words and phrases?

hmm.. so a text box with 4 words in has these combinations:
a
b
c
d
ab
bc
cd
abc
bcd
abcd



hmm... i think your search is going to be very long if you include phrases...