Re: Comparing 2 strings for matches in any order
From: Dirk Goldgar (dg_at_NOdataSPAMgnostics.com)
Date: 03/09/05
- Next message: Andre' L. Micheaux: "If varable Then"
- Previous message: Sandra Daigle: "Re: Linking Tables"
- In reply to: erighter: "Comparing 2 strings for matches in any order"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 13:44:14 -0500
"erighter" <erighter@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BE0DF2F4-226B-443C-A647-A1DE38FFED24@microsoft.com
> I'm trying to figure out a way to tell if any combination of the words
> (single space separated) in List A exactly matches any combination of
> the words in List B (including only matching the exact number of
> words)
>
> I would be happy to use either Excel or Access to work on this...
>
> List A
> --------------
> row 1: apple peach pear
> row 2: bear dog cat
> row 3: jump rope
>
> List B
> --------------
> row 1: rope jump
> row 2: cat bear dog
> row 3: pear dog porcupine
> row 4: apple peach pear grape
>
> End Results:
> --------------
> (List B)
> row 1: rope jump (matches Column A row 3)
> row 2: cat bear dog (matches Column A row 2)
> row 3: pear dog porcupine (no match)
> row 4: apple peach pear grape (no match - too many words in
> Column B)
>
>
> My idea so far is to do count the words in each column so that I will
> know if the match is valid because the number of words in each
> comparison has to be equal (each string of multiple words uses a
> single space delimiter).
>
> Then I was trying to find a way to put each word (substring) into
> it's own column/field, because I think that would allow me to use the
> Excel Match function to compare a word agains the array of possible
> words....
>
> Column A: Column B:
> A B C A B C
> ----- ------- -------- ----- ------- ------
> row1 : bear dog cat cat bear dog
>
> If cat in Column B row 1 matched cat in Column A row 1, then incement
> a counter.
> If not, I need to compare to Column A row 2 and so forth.
> Then the whole process repeats, matching Column B's bear to the array
> - row by row.
>
> In the end, if the counter matches the count of words, then we can
> determine that there was a positive match made for that string in
> some combination.
>
> This was just my initial idea on how to tackle this problem, but I
> can't parse out the keywords into individual columns to try it.
>
> All ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hmm. You could write a function that sorts each string of words and
returns the sorted string. Then matching one list against the other
would be a matter of comparing the function's output for each row.
The function would receive a string (the unsorted list of words) and
return a string (the sorted list). It could use the Split function to
parse the unsorted string into an array, then use a simple sort algorthm
to sort that list (VB code for sorting arrays is easy to find on the
web), and then use the Join function to reassemble the sorted array into
a string.
-- Dirk Goldgar, MS Access MVP www.datagnostics.com (please reply to the newsgroup)
- Next message: Andre' L. Micheaux: "If varable Then"
- Previous message: Sandra Daigle: "Re: Linking Tables"
- In reply to: erighter: "Comparing 2 strings for matches in any order"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
