user input ignore case

Question

I am reading a user input. I was wondering how I would apply equalsIgnoreCase to the user input?

 ArrayList<String> aListColors = new ArrayList<String>();
    aListColors.add("Red");
    aListColors.add("Green");
    aListColors.add("Blue");

 InputStreamReader istream = new InputStreamReader(System.in) ;
 BufferedReader bufRead = new BufferedReader(istream) ;
 String rem = bufRead.readLine();  // the user can enter 'red' instead of 'Red'
 aListColors.remove(rem);  //equalsIgnoreCase or other procedure to match and remove.

Answer 1

If you don't need a List you could use a Set initialized with a case-insensitive comparator:

Set<String> colors = 
      new TreeSet<String>(new Comparator<String>()
          { 
            public int compare(String value1, String value2)
            {
              // this throw an exception if value1 is null!
              return value1.compareToIgnoreCase(value2);
            }
          });

colors.add("Red");
colors.add("Green");
colors.add("Blue");

Now when you call remove, the case of the argument no longer matters. So both of the following lines would work:

colors.remove("RED");

or

colors.remove("Red");

But this will only work if you don't need the ordering that the List interfaces gives you.