If the list of words is stable (not many words are added or deleted), a very good second alternative is to create 2 lists:
- One with the words in normal order.
- The second with the characters in each word reversed.
For speed purposes, make them ArrayLists. Never LinkedLists or other variants which perform extremely bad on random access (the core of binary search; see below).
After the lists are created, they can be sorted with method Collections.sort (only once each) and then searched with Collections.binarySearch. For example:
Collections.sort(forwardList);
Collections.sort(backwardList);
And then to search for words starting in "Foo":
int i= Collections.binarySearch(forwardList,"Foo") ;
while( i < forwardList.size() && forwardList.get(i).startsWith("Foo") ) {
// Process String forwardList.get(i)
i++;
}
And words ending in "Bar":
int i= Collections.binarySearch(backwardList,"raB") ;
while( i < backwardList.size() && backwardList.get(i).startsWith("raB") ) {
// Process String backwardList.get(i)
i++;
}