Android Loading Strings into Array

Question

I have a list of 1000 words. I need to load an array with n randomly chosen words from that list (no repeats allowed). What is the best way of going about doing that?

My ideas:

1) Load the words into R.arrays to create a String array. Use collections.shuffle to shuffle the array, then pull the first n entries from it. Right now, I am having memory issues loading the initial array with the 1000 words using this method.

2) Load the words into a text file, read each word into a String array. Use same method to get first n entries.

3) Hard code the input of the words into a String array (I'd use a script to get that output of course). Use same method to get first n entries.

Is there a better way?

Dan Calinescu · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-19 19:54:48Z

1

If you're mainly worried about memory usage and you're willing to give up computation speed, here's an algorithm that will get you there.

Keep your words in a text file, one word per line, with a fixed amount of characters per word, padding each word with spaces at the end to ensure a fixed word char size, call it s.

Create an array of max size n, call it w
Open a stream reader to the file containing the 1000 words
Get a random number between 1 and 1000, call it k
Seek to position k*s in the file stream and grab the next s characters
Add the word to w if it does not exist in the array yet
If the w array is full (ie. size=n), we're done, otherwise go back to step 3

Let us know how it goes. Happy coding!

answered Nov 19, 2011 at 19:54

Dan Calinescu

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2 Comments

Rob Over a year ago

That seems just crazy enough to work. Any idea why Android complains when I just load the strings directly from R.arrays? Do 1000 strings really take up that much memory?

Dan Calinescu Over a year ago

Yes Strings are quite expensive. When memory is a concern I'd stay away from them as much as possible.

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