searching for chars within a string

[larry at significantplanet.org]

Hello Peter,
Thanks for sending your functions. I'm still sort of a newbie and I had to 
get a programming friend give me a quick course in how functions work 
(especially the local variables.)
Anyway, I ran a test using your functions against the offset() function in 
LC
Searching 78 characters (the entire alphabet repeated 3 times) for all 
possible 7-ltr words (32,856 is the result) we have:
your functions: 3045 milliseconds
offset(): 1249 milliseconds

But I'm going to file away your functions because I may use them later in 
some other manner - and what I learned today about functions was very 
helpful.
So thanks again.
Larry
P.S. I'm using LC 6.6.3 on Windows XP with 4gb of ram.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter M. Brigham" <pmbrig at gmail.com>
To: "How to use LiveCode" <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 11:53 AM
Subject: Re: searching for chars within a string


> I'm curious, Larry -- how fast is this on your machine compared to the 
> regex solutions?
>
> function isInString testStr, targetStr
>   repeat for each char c in testStr
>      add 1 to countArray[c]
>   end repeat
>   put the keys of countArray into letterList
>   repeat for each line L in letterlist
>      put countArray[L] into nbrCharsTest
>      put howMany(c,targetStr,comma) into nbrCharsNeeded
>      if nbrCharsNeeded < nbrCharsTest then return false
>   end repeat
>   return true
> end isInString
>
> function howmany tg,container,divChar
>   -- how many tg = <target string> is in container
>
>   replace tg with divChar in container
>   set the itemdelimiter to divChar
>   put the number of items of container into h
>   if char -1 of container = divChar then return h
>   -- trailing delimiter is ignored
>   return h-1
> end howmany
>
> -- Peter
>
> Peter M. Brigham
> pmbrig at gmail.com
> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2014, at 11:58 AM, <larry at significantplanet.org> 
> <larry at significantplanet.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello Kay,
>> Good stuff.
>> I did some time tests and offset() is about twice as fast as matchText(). 
>> Don't know why.
>> Larry
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kay C Lan" <lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com>
>> To: "How to use LiveCode" <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>
>> Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 12:54 AM
>> Subject: Re: searching for chars within a string
>>
>>
>>> A simple way would be just to use basic matchText() for each single
>>> letter and regex matchText() for repeating letters.  P.*P will find
>>> double Ps, P.*P.*P will find triple Ps etc. Seems to be relatively
>>> fast but if you have very large data sets other alternatives would
>>> need to be investigated.
>>>
>>> in the message box:
>>>
>>> put "ABCDEKLP" into X
>>> put "ABCDEKLLLLMMOOPP" into Y
>>> put 100000 into Z
>>> put 0 into a
>>> put 0 into b
>>> put 0 into c
>>> put 0 into d
>>> put the millisec into tStart
>>> repeat Z times
>>> if (matchText(X, "A") AND matchText(X, "E") AND matchText(X, "L") AND
>>> matchText(X, "P.*P")) then
>>>  add 1 to a
>>> else
>>> add 1 to b
>>> end if
>>> if (matchText(Y, "A") AND matchText(Y, "E") AND matchText(Y, "L") AND
>>> matchText(Y, "P.*P")) then
>>> add 1 to c
>>> else
>>> add 1 to d
>>> end if
>>> end repeat
>>> put the millisec into tEnd
>>> put "X Passed " & a & " times." & cr into msg
>>> put "X Failed " & b & " times." & cr after msg
>>> put "Y Passed " & c & " times." & cr after msg
>>> put "Y Failed " & d & " times." & cr after msg
>>> put Z & " repeats took " & tEnd - tStart & " ms" after msg
>>>
>>> The above should take less than 1 sec but for a million repeats I got:
>>>
>>> X Passed 0 times.
>>> X Failed 1000000 times.
>>> Y Passed 1000000 times.
>>> Y Failed 0 times.
>>> 1000000 repeats took 1997 ms
>>>
>>> NOTE: the above only works if the letters you are looking for can
>>> appear in ANY order. If you need a specific order then you'd have to
>>> regex matchText() for all searches, ie
>>>
>>> if (matchText(X, "A.*E.*L.*P") AND matchText(X,"P.*P")) then
>>>
>>> Yes, the P must appear in both searches to ensure a P has both an L
>>> before it and a P after it.
>>>
>>> HTH
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 8:22 AM,  <larry at significantplanet.org> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I have done a lot research and cannot find any way to do this:
>>>>
>>>> I have a string, "AELPP" and I want to see if all 5 of those letters 
>>>> are in "search string"
>>>>
>>>> If search string is:  ABCDEKLP,   then NO it isn't because there are 
>>>> two P's in the string I'm searching for.
>>>>
>>>> But if search string is:  ABCDEKLLLMMOOPP, then YES the string I'm 
>>>> searching for is found in the search string.
>>>>
>>>> It is important to my program that I just find the 5 chars anywhere 
>>>> within the search string and they do not have to be sequential in the 
>>>> search string.
>
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