There are a number of well known algorithms out there for taking in a set of keywords and matching them against test. Aho and Corasick comes to mind, as does the Wu Manber algorithm (the latter I've implemented, and the code resides elsewhere on this site).
For another project, I didn't need something quite so fancy. Actually two projects come to mind. One is that I
have a input comma separated value file which includes stock symbols, a description, and the associated exchange. I
wanted to keep statitics on what is read in on an exchange basis. My first kick at the can on this was to implement a
string look up table using