How to find the starting index of all occurrences of a word in a string in Scala

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//
// Find all starting indices of a word inside a larger text.
// This function uses String.indexOf in a loop. The JVM implements
// substring search in optimized native code, making this approach efficient.
//
def findAllOccurrences(text: String, word: String): List[Int] = {
  // Searching for an empty word is meaningless
  if (word.isEmpty) return Nil

  var indices: List[Int] = Nil
  var index: Int = text.indexOf(word) // First occurrence

  //
  // Loop:
  // - If indexOf finds a match, record the index.
  // - Then search again starting one character after the previous match.
  //   This allows detection of overlapping matches.
  //
  while (index != -1) {
    indices = indices :+ index
    index = text.indexOf(word, index + 1)
  }

  indices
}

@main def run(): Unit = {
  val text: String =
    "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. the fox is clever."
  val word: String = "the"

  println(s"Text: $text")
  println(s"""Word: "$word"""")
  println()
  println("Occurrences at indices:")

  for (idx <- findAllOccurrences(text, word)) {
    println(idx)
  }
}


/*
run:

Text: the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. the fox is clever.
Word: "the"

Occurrences at indices:
0
31
45

*/

 



answered Aug 30 by avibootz

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