Looped Array compare

aspless · April 9th, 2009, 01:59 PM

Chaps,

The issue i am having is with an array compare..

Until now my vacant grasp of splits and basic arrays has been enough but comparing two variable length arrays against each other has got me a tad stumpt..

'Firstly we have a results string:
ResString="100/1,101/2,104/5,109/3"

'Second String is a count of how many times the values in previous ResStrings have been used
UsedString="100/1#5,101/2#1,"

What i am attempting badley is to compare the ResString value against the UsedString value.
If the values match replace the UsedString record with an updated count value or if no compare was found to create a new UsedString value.

I can see part of the solution but the loop within loop is getting me ..

Split the first string

Code:

SplResString=Split(ResString,",")

Create the first loop

Code:

For x = 0 to ubound(SplResString)

Then i presume i can start the next array within the first (now probably going wrong)

Code:

SplUsedString=Split(UsedString,",")
For y = 0 to ubound(SplUsedString)

Then Add the second split

Code:

ReSplUsedString=Split(SplUsedString(y),"#")

and compare the two values (Sure way off here)

Code:

If SplResString(x) = ReSplUsedString(0) then
'Add to rate
newrate=Int(ReSplUsedString(1)) + 1
SplResString(x)=Replace(SplResString(x),ReSplUsedString(0)&#&ReSplUsedString(1),ReSplUsedString(0)&#&newrate)

If you can see where i am going any direction toward my rambling code would be great.

Cheers

Aspless

Old Pedant · April 10th, 2009, 12:58 AM

Can you, instead of the code, just tell us what the expected RESULTS are, given the inputs that you specified?

As I read you, you want to go from:

Code:

ResString="100/1,101/2,104/5,109/3"
 UsedString="100/1#5,101/2#1,"

to a new UsedString that will look like:

Code:

UsedString="100/1#6,101/2#2,104/5#1,109/3#1"

Is that even close to correct?

Dare I ask what prompted you to use this ultra-weird string-based notation, instead of just using a simple database?

Oh, and does it really matter what the order of the values in the new UsedString results are? That is, if it just so happened that we could more easily get

Code:

UsedString="109/3#1,100/1#6,104/5#1,101/2#2"

would you care?

aspless · April 10th, 2009, 04:41 AM

The original string "ResString" is a set of results from a simple survey.

The first element is associated with the question ID and the second is the rate (between 1 - 5) EG '101/5'

The survey could be taken by multiple people and there fore several results strings as above.

What i am trying to do is count the number of times a specific question and rate has been selected so that i can add to the main survey results record set.

Example results page below

Question Rate 1 Rate 2 Rate 3 Rate4 Rate5
Can aspless code? 10 times 7 Times 3 Times 0 Times 0 Times

The idea was to create a questions used string eg '101/5#12' which could be referenced quicker than checking each results string to identify the same counts.

Any thoughts to a cleaner solution would be great .. the end result - no pun intended is to produce a single survey record set which will include No of times a rate has been selected ..

For reference the question idâs do go in numerical order .. my example was inaccurate. Sorry!

Cheers

Aspless

aspless · April 10th, 2009, 05:23 AM

One way to remove the need to have lot's of long strings would be to use further recordsets eg

Survey ID | Question ID | Rate 1 | Rate2 | Rate3 | Rate 4 | Rate5

The only reason i did not consider this option is the amount of database size used as a result.

How ever over what could be a very long question used string this is the better option..

Cheers

Aspless