Thread: Better Way?

There most likely is a more efficient way of doing it, however it depends on a few factors:

1. How many 'acceptableCharacters' there are in the string.
2. How many times charMatch is called with the same 'acceptableChars' string.

One option is for the constructor and changeAcceptableCharacterList to sort the list of chars. Then the charMatch function can do a binary search to hunt for the validatee in the string. That will be faster or slower depending on the items listed above. The bigger the numbers in the answers to 1 and 2 above, the more efficient the technique I just mentioned will be.

If the answer 2 is large enough then building a hashed table, or even a complete table of acceptable chars will be faster as you can then do O(1) lookups.

Another option might be to have a look-up table, an array of bools/chars [256] where you can look up the acceptable characters directly (O(1): is_acceptable[input[0]]).

'Range' is a vague word. It could be one char 99% of the time and then all chars 1% of the time.
You also given no hint as to how often charMatch is called on the same instance of the class.
To give us an idea of how it is used you'd actually have to tell us what if it is used for, or post code. For example if the acceptableCharacters string is always from a hard-coded string then you could simply make that hard-coded string already sorted, saving a sort at runtime.
It's also entirely possible that depending on your usage patterns the function you've provided is already optimal.
Until you can provide some more information, there's nothing more we can tell you. If you don't have any idea how you use it because you aren't actually using it at all, then you're wasting our time.