case insensitive Pos - delphi

Question

Is there any comparable function like Pos that is not case-sensitive in D2010 (unicode)?
I know I can use Pos(AnsiUpperCase(FindString), AnsiUpperCase(SourceString)) but that adds a lot of processing time by converting the strings to uppercase every time the function is called.
For example, on a 1000000 loop, Pos takes 78ms while converting to uppercase takes 764ms.
str1 := 'dfkfkL%&/s"#<.676505';
for i := 0 to 1000000 do
PosEx('#<.', str1, 1); // Takes 78ms
for i := 0 to 1000000 do
PosEx(AnsiUpperCase('#<.'), AnsiUpperCase(str1), 1); // Takes 764ms
I know that to improve the performance of this specific example I can convert the strings to uppercase first before the loop, but the reason why I'm looking to have a Pos-like function that is not case-sensitive is to replace one from FastStrings. All the strings I'll be using Pos for will be different so I will need to convert each and every one to uppercase.
Is there any other function that might be faster than Pos + convert the strings to uppercase?

Answer 1

The built-in Delphi function to do that is in both the AnsiStrings.ContainsText for AnsiStrings and StrUtils.ContainsText for Unicode strings.
In the background however, they use logic very similar to your logic.
No matter in which library, functions like that will always be slow: especially to be as compatible with Unicode as possible, they need to have quite a lot of overhead. And since they are inside the loop, that costs a lot.
The only way to circumvent that overhead, is to do those conversions outside the loop as much as possible.
So: follow your own suggestion, and you have a really good solution.
--jeroen

Answer 2

This version of my previous answer works in both D2007 and D2010.
In Delphi 2007 the CharUpCaseTable is 256 bytes
In Delphi 2010 it is 128 KB (65535*2).
The reason is Char size. In the older version of Delphi my original code only supported the current locale character set at initialization. My InsensPosEx is about 4 times faster than your code. Certainly it is possible to go even faster, but we would lose simplicity.
type
TCharUpCaseTable = array [Char] of Char;
var
CharUpCaseTable: TCharUpCaseTable;
procedure InitCharUpCaseTable(var Table: TCharUpCaseTable);
var
n: cardinal;
begin
for n := 0 to Length(Table) - 1 do
Table[Char(n)] := Char(n);
CharUpperBuff(#Table, Length(Table));
end;
function InsensPosEx(const SubStr, S: string; Offset: Integer = 1): Integer;
var
n: Integer;
SubStrLength: Integer;
SLength: Integer;
label
Fail;
begin
Result := 0;
if S = '' then Exit;
if Offset <= 0 then Exit;
SubStrLength := Length(SubStr);
SLength := Length(s);
if SubStrLength > SLength then Exit;
Result := Offset;
while SubStrLength <= (SLength-Result+1) do
begin
for n := 1 to SubStrLength do
if CharUpCaseTable[SubStr[n]] <> CharUpCaseTable[s[Result+n-1]] then
goto Fail;
Exit;
Fail:
Inc(Result);
end;
Result := 0;
end;
//...
initialization
InitCharUpCaseTable({var}CharUpCaseTable);

Answer 3

I have also faced the problem of converting FastStrings, which used a Boyer-Moore (BM) search to gain some speed, for D2009 and D2010. Since many of my searches are looking for a single character only, and most of these are looking for non-alphabetic characters, my D2010 version of SmartPos has an overload version with a widechar as the first argument, and does a simple loop through the string to find these. I use uppercasing of both arguments to handle the few non-case-sensitive case. For my applications, I believe the speed of this solution is comparable to FastStrings.
For the 'string find' case, my first pass was to use SearchBuf and do the uppercasing and accept the penalty, but I have recently been looking into the possibility of using a Unicode BM implementation. As you may be aware, BM does not scale well or easily to charsets of Unicode proportions, but there is a Unicode BM implementation at Soft Gems. This pre-dates D2009 and D2010, but looks as if it would convert fairly easily. The author, Mike Lischke, solves the uppercasing issue by including a 67kb Unicode uppercasing table, and this may be a step too far for my modest requirements. Since my search strings are usually short (though not as short as your single three-character example) the overhead for Unicode BM may also be a price not worth paying: the BM advantage increases with the length of the string being searched for.
This is definitely a situation where benchmarking with some real-world application-specific examples will be needed before incorporating that Unicode BM into my own applications.
Edit: some basic benchmarking shows that I was right to be wary of the "Unicode Tuned Boyer-Moore" solution. In my environment, UTBM results in bigger code, longer time. I might consider using it if I needed some of the extras this implementation provides (handling surrogates and whole-words only searches).

Answer 4

Here's one that I wrote and have been using for years:
function XPos( const cSubStr, cString :string ) :integer;
var
nLen0, nLen1, nCnt, nCnt2 :integer;
cFirst :Char;
begin
nLen0 := Length(cSubStr);
nLen1 := Length(cString);
if nLen0 > nLen1 then
begin
// the substr is longer than the cString
result := 0;
end
else if nLen0 = 0 then
begin
// null substr not allowed
result := 0;
end
else
begin
// the outer loop finds the first matching character....
cFirst := UpCase( cSubStr[1] );
result := 0;
for nCnt := 1 to nLen1 - nLen0 + 1 do
begin
if UpCase( cString[nCnt] ) = cFirst then
begin
// this might be the start of the substring...at least the first
// character matches....
result := nCnt;
for nCnt2 := 2 to nLen0 do
begin
if UpCase( cString[nCnt + nCnt2 - 1] ) <> UpCase( cSubStr[nCnt2] ) then
begin
// failed
result := 0;
break;
end;
end;
end;
if result > 0 then
break;
end;
end;
end;

Answer 5

Why not just convert the both the substring and the source string to lower or upper case within the regular Pos statement. The result will effectively be case-insensitive because both arguments are all in one case. Simple and lite.

Answer 6

The Jedi Code Library has StrIPos and thousands of other useful functions to complement Delphi's RTL. When I still worked a lot in Delphi, JCL and its visual brother JVCL were among the first things I added to a freshly installed Delphi.

Answer 7

Instead 'AnsiUpperCase' you can use Table it is much faster.
I have reshape my old code. It is very simple and also very fast.
Check it:
type
TAnsiUpCaseTable = array [AnsiChar] of AnsiChar;
var
AnsiTable: TAnsiUpCaseTable;
procedure InitAnsiUpCaseTable(var Table: TAnsiUpCaseTable);
var
n: cardinal;
begin
for n := 0 to SizeOf(TAnsiUpCaseTable) -1 do
begin
AnsiTable[AnsiChar(n)] := AnsiChar(n);
CharUpperBuff(#AnsiTable[AnsiChar(n)], 1);
end;
end;
function UpCasePosEx(const SubStr, S: string; Offset: Integer = 1): Integer;
var
n :integer;
SubStrLength :integer;
SLength :integer;
label
Fail;
begin
SLength := length(s);
if (SLength > 0) and (Offset > 0) then begin
SubStrLength := length(SubStr);
result := Offset;
while SubStrLength <= SLength - result + 1 do begin
for n := 1 to SubStrLength do
if AnsiTable[SubStr[n]] <> AnsiTable[s[result + n -1]] then
goto Fail;
exit;
Fail:
inc(result);
end;
end;
result := 0;
end;
initialization
InitAnsiUpCaseTable(AnsiTable);
end.

Answer 8

I think, converting to upper or lower case before Pos is the best way, but you should try to call AnsiUpperCase/AnsiLowerCase functions as less as possible.

Answer 9

On this occasion I couldn't find any approach that was even as good as, let alone better than Pos() + some form of string normalisation (upper/lowercase conversion).
This is not entirely surprising as when benchmarked the Unicode string handling in Delphi 2009 I found that the Pos() RTL routine has improved significantly since Delphi 7, explained in part by the fact that aspects of the FastCode libraries have been incorporated into the RTL for some time now.
The FastStrings library on the other hand has not - iirc - been significantly updated for a long time now. In tests I found that many FastStrings routines have in fact been overtaken by the equivalent RTL functions (with a couple of exceptions, explained by the unavoidable overhead incurred by the additional complications of Unicode).
The "Char-Wise" processing of the solution presented by Steve is the best so far imho.
Any approach that involves normalising the entire strings (both string and sub-string) risks introducing errors in any character-based position in the results due to the fact that with Unicode strings a case conversion may result in a change in the length of the string (some characters convert to more/fewer characters in a case conversion).
These may be rare cases but Steve's routine avoids them and is only about 10% slower than the already quite fast Pos + Uppercase (your benchmarking results don't tally with mine on that score).

Answer 10

Often the simple solution is the one you'd want to use:
if AnsiPos(AnsiupperCase('needle'), AnsiupperCase('The Needle in the haystack')) <> 0 then
DoSomething;
Reference:
http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/RTL.asp?Name=ansipos
http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/RTL.asp?Name=UpCase

Answer 11

Any program on Windows can call a shell-API function, which keeps your code-size down. As usual, read the program from the bottom up. This has been tested with Ascii-strings only, not wide strings.
program PrgDmoPosIns; {$AppType Console} // demo case-insensitive Pos function for Windows
// Free Pascal 3.2.2 [2022/01/02], Win32 for i386
// FPC.EXE -vq -CoOr -Twin32 -oPrgStrPosDmo.EXE PrgStrPosDmo.LPR
// -vq Verbose: Show message numbers
// -C Code generation:
// o Check overflow of integer operations
// O Check for possible overflow of integer operations - Integer Overflow checking turns on Warning 4048
// r Range checking
// -Twin32 Target 32 bit Windows operating systems
// 29600 bytes code, 1316 bytes data, 35,840 bytes file
function StrStrIA( pszHaystack, pszNeedle : PChar ) : PChar; stdcall; external 'shlwapi.dll'; // dynamic link to Windows API's case-INsensitive search
// https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shlwapi/nf-shlwapi-strstria
// "FPC\3.2.2\Source\Packages\winunits-base\src\shlwapi.pp" line 557
function StrPos( strNeedle, strHaystk : string ) : SizeInt; // return the position of Needle within Haystack, or zero if not found
var
intRtn : SizeInt; // function result
ptrHayStk , // pointers to
ptrNeedle , // search strings
strMchFnd : PChar ; // pointer to match-found string, or null-pointer/empty-string when not found
bolFnd : boolean; // whether Needle was found within Haystack
intLenHaystk , // length of haystack
intLenMchFnd : SizeInt; // length of needle
begin
strHayStk := strHayStk + #0 ; // strings passed to API must be
strNeedle := strNeedle + #0 ; // null-terminated
ptrHayStk := Addr( strHayStk[ 1 ] ) ; // set pointers to point at first characters of
ptrNeedle := Addr( strNeedle[ 1 ] ) ; // null-terminated strings, so API gets C-style strings
strMchFnd := StrStrIA( ptrHayStk, ptrNeedle ); // call Windows to perform search; match-found-string now points inside the Haystack
bolFnd := ( strMchFnd <> '' ) ; // variable is True when match-found-string is not null/empty
if bolFnd then begin ; // when Needle was yes found in Haystack
intLenMchFnd := Length( strMchFnd ) ; // get length of needle
intLenHaystk := Length( strHayStk ) ; // get length of haystack
intRtn := intLenHaystk - intLenMchFnd; // set function result to the position of needle within haystack, which is the difference in lengths
end else // when Needle was not found in Haystack
intRtn := 0 ; // set function result to tell caller needle does not appear within haystack
StrPos := intRtn ; // pass function result back to caller
end; // StrPos
procedure TstOne( const strNeedle, strHayStk : string ); // run one test with this Needle
var
intPos : SizeInt; // found-match location of Needle within Haystack, or zero if none
begin
write ( 'Searching for : [', strNeedle, ']' ); // bgn output row for this test
intPos := StrPos( strNeedle, strHaystk ); // get Needle position
writeln(' StrPos is ' , intPos ); // end output row for this test
end; // TstOne
procedure TstAll( ); // run all tests with various Needles
const
strHayStk = 'Needle in a Haystack'; // all tests will search in this string
begin
writeln( 'Searching in : [', strHayStk, ']' ); // emit header row
TstOne ( 'Noodle' , strHayStk ); // test not-found
TstOne ( 'Needle' , strHayStk ); // test found at yes-first character
TstOne ( 'Haystack' , strHayStk ); // test found at not-first character
end; // TstAll
begin // ***** MAIN *****
TstAll( ); // run all tests
end.

Answer 12

function TextPos(const ASubText, AText: UnicodeString): Integer;
var
res: Integer;
begin
{
Locates a substring in a given text string without case sensitivity.
Returns the index of the first occurence of ATextin AText,
or zero if the text was not found
}
res := FindNLSString(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, FIND_FROMSTART or LINGUISTIC_IGNORECASE, PWideChar(AText), Length(AText), PWideChar(ASubText), Length(ASubText), nil);
Result := (res+1); //convert zero-based to one-based index, and -1 not found to zero.
end;
And in case you don't have the definitions:
function FindNLSString(Locale: LCID; dwFindNLSStringFlags: DWORD; lpStringSource: PWideChar; cchSource: Integer; lpStringValue: PWideChar; cchValue: Integer; cchFound: PInteger): Integer; stdcall; external 'Kernel32.dll';
const
FIND_FROMSTART = $00400000; // look for value in source, starting at the
LINGUISTIC_IGNORECASE = $00000010; // linguistically appropriate 'ignore