Deleting 1 line from a long list

Cubist at aol.com Cubist at aol.com
Tue Oct 21 05:27:37 EDT 2003


sez igor at pixelmedia.com.au:
>I was wondering if the way that I'm going about a certain task is 
>actually the easiest/fastest way. The task is: I have a list 
>(return-delimited) of several hundred words. I need to delete ONE 
>specific word from the list.
>
>Right now, I'm using a repeat loop, iterating through the list until I
>find the string, then deleting it:
>
># PRE: pLIst should be a return-delimited list of strings. pString 
>should be the text of one of the items in pList.
># POST: pList is returned, minus the line that contains/is pString.
>function fDeleteLine pList,pString
>   if pList is empty then return empty
>   if pString is empty then return pList
>   repeat with x = 1 to number of lines in pList
>       if line x of pList is pString then
>           delete line x of pList
>           exit repeat
>   end repeat
>   return pList
>end fDeleteLine
>
>I know that the "repeat with x" structure is supposed to be slower than
>other forms of repeat, and I also seem to remember some experienced 
>users in this list recommending using arrays in some way to speed up 
>search and replace functions in lists.
>
>So: is there a faster way to do this?
   Don't bother with a repeat loop at all.

function fDeleteLine pList,pString
    if pList is empty then return empty
    if pString is empty then return pList
    put offset ((return & pString & return),(return & pList & return)) into 
Fred
    if Fred = 0 then
        # pString isn't in pList at all
        return empty
    else
        put the number of lines in char 1 to Fred of pList into George
        delete line George of pList
        return pList
    end if
end fDeleteLine

   This is untested, off-the-top-of-my-head code, but it should illustrate 
the idea...


More information about the use-livecode mailing list