Help with an algorithm...

[Alex Tweedly]

I'm a great fan of, and user of, arrays - but we always need to be 
careful of losing data with duplicated keys.

You haven't said that the parent names in LISTNEW are guaranteed to be 
unique. This simple code assumes they are - if they're not, it's easy to 
add a check ...  (And it also assumes the inputs are properly formatted!!)

(inputs are in fields "FNew" and "FOld", output in field "FOut")

on mouseUp
    local tOld, tNew, tOut
    local tA
    local tLastParent

    put the text of fld "FNew" into tNew
    repeat for each line L in tNew  -- convert to array
       if L begins with space then -- a child
          put L &CR after tA[tLastParent]
       else
          put L into tLastParent
       end if
    end repeat

    put the text of fld "FOld" into tOld
    put empty into tLastParent
    repeat for each line L in tOld
       if L begins with space then -- a child
          if (tLastParent is not empty) \
                 AND (L is not among the lines of tA[tLastParent]) then
             put L &CR after tA[tLastParent]
          end if
       else
          if L is among the keys of tA then -- a Parent we need to deal with
             put L into tLastParent
          else
             put empty into tLastParent
          end if
       end if
    end repeat

    -- and then collect the expanded outptu
    local tKeys
    put the keys of tA into tKeys
    sort lines of tKeys
    repeat for each line K in tKeys
       put K &CR & tA[K] after tOut
    end repeat
    put tOut into fld "fOut"
end mouseUp

Alex.


On 05/08/2019 16:53, Paul Dupuis via use-livecode wrote:
> Today is not my coding day. I have a problem I should be able to 
> design a solution for an am struggling. Clearly I am missing "something"
>
> I have 2 lists (LISTNEW and LISTOLD) of the following format:
>
> ParentA
> <space>Child 1
> <space>Child 2
> <space>etc.
> ParentB
> <space>Child 1
> <space>etc.
> etc.
>
> The parents are in alphabetical sorted order, the children may not be 
> in sorted order
>
> I need to hunt through LISTOLD comparing the LISTOLD Parents to the 
> LISTNEW Parents
>   FOR any LISTOLD Parent present in LISTNEW, check the Children of the 
> matching Parents and add any Child for the LISTOLD Parent that is not 
> already under its matching LISTNEW Parent
>   FOR any LISTOLD Parent NOT in LISTNEW, I can ignore the Parent and 
> its Children
>
> I can not seem to write an approach to solve this today. Does any body 
> have some code so solve this they may be willing to share?
>
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