Filtering array vs plain list

[Shari]

>   personName[3258] = "Billy Bob"
>   birthyear[3258] = 1982
>
>Intersecting the values you get from retrieving each array/key combo gives
>you the identifiers for all the people who match all your selection
>criteria, as many as you care to specify.


I've just about got it.  You gave me a good jumping board, Dick. 
Here's where it sits.  Using one single array (this allows for the 
best ease of use), data is stored as follows:

census[1111,team] = Red Sox
census[2222,team] = Red Sox
census[3333,team] = White Sox
census[1111,city] = Chicago
census[2222,city] = Atlanta
census[3333,city] = Chicago

Now, to get a list of folks that live in Atlanta that are Red Sox 
fans, I did the following:

put census into a
combine a with return and comma
filter a with "*,team,Red Sox"

put census into b
combine b with return and comma
filter b with "*,city,Atlanta"

This gives me:
a =
1111,team,Red Sox
2222,team,Red Sox

b =
2222,city,Atlanta

Can a and b be intersected as is?  (My attempts failed.)  The 
following works beautifully, but is it the most efficient?  Is using 
split/combine/filter to manipulate a giant array faster than a repeat 
loop thru a gigantic list?

   split a by return and comma
   split b by return and comma
   intersect a with b

   combine a with return and comma
   answer a

a =
2222,team,Red Sox

That gave me exactly what I need.  A list of anyone with team(Red 
Sox) and city(Atlanta) with item 1 of each line as the unique 
identifier.

Any efficiency suggestions are welcome :-)

Shari

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