Using conditional operator for long if statement

Question

I am seeing if there is a better/nicer way of writing a long if statement using multiple || operators.

After looking online I see a lot of examples using conditional binomial operator. Is there a way this can be used when checking if a string equals a word?

The examples online follow this structure:

int price = condition?80:100;

Here is the function:

public boolean validateLetters(String word) {
    if (word.equals("apple") || word.equals("excel") || word.equals("intern")
        || word.equals("orange") || word.equals("car")) {
      return true;
    }
    return false;
  }

The function checks to see the parameter word matches one of the following.

Is there a nicer or more efficient way I could write it?

Answer 1

The simplest way for this specific check is to put all relevant words into a Set and use contains:

private static final Set<String> VALID_WORDS = Set.of("apple", "excel", "intern", "orange", "car");

public boolean validateLetters(String word) {
    return VALID_WORDS.contains(word);
}

Generally speaking typing out a list of very similar checks combined in some way is an indication that you should refactor your code in some way.

Answer 2

You can use some sort of collection as it will make code more readable:

// Use a HashSet for performance
 Set<String> values = new HashSet<String>(Arrays.asList("apple", "excel", "intern", "orange", "car"));
    
    // In your method:
  return values.contains(word);

A HashSet is used here to give good look-up performance - even very large hash sets are able to execute contains() extremely quickly.

You can also try this:

public boolean validateLetters(String word) {
    switch(word) {
        case "apple":
        case "excel":
        case "intern":
        case "orange":
        case "car":
            return true;
        default:
            return false;
    }

}