Back to Questions
752
views1
comment
"fuzzy" searching in a list using pattern matching
f#

Hi,

still getting stared with F#, I have the following problem:

I have a type defined like this:

type Person =
{ ID: int;
Firstname: string;
Lastname: string;
}

Now I want to search for persons by firstname and lastname using some "fuzzy" logic. If the lastname occures only once in the list, I take this person and don't care about the firstname. If there are multiple hits by lastname, I check this subset with the firstname. If I get a unique hit by firstname, I will use that. If not I have some string processing where I check initals and so on (for example "Domma, A" vs. "Domma, Achim").

I have the feeling, that I should be able to implement that using pattern matching and that the solution should be easy and readable. But I don't get it!?

Could somebody guide me in the right direction? Any help is very appreciated!

Achim

.

I don't know that pattern matching will do any miracles for you here. Here's one stab at it:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

#light

type Person =
    {   ID: int;
        Firstname: string;
        Lastname: string;
    }

let OtherLogic first last l = None

let BestMatch : string -> string -> Person list -> Person option =
    fun first last list ->
    match list |> List.filter (fun p -> p.Lastname = last) with
    | [] -> OtherLogic first last list
    | [x] -> Some x
    | list2 -> 
        match list2 |> List.filter (fun p -> p.Firstname = first) with
        | [x] -> Some x
        | _ -> OtherLogic first last list2
By on 12/4/2008 1:54 AM ()

    Topic tags

    IntelliFactory Offices Copyright (c) 2011-2012 IntelliFactory. All rights reserved.
    Home | Products | Consulting | Trainings | Blogs | Jobs | Contact Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy     		Built with WebSharper