From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2006-09-03T04:25:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Ordered contrast for String or Array


James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Sep 2, 2006, at 12:10 PM, Trans wrote:
>
> > I have two strings: "aabc" and "aacd". I want to get an "ordered
> > contrast" to see the difference in their spellings. Eg.
> >
> >   "aabc".ordered_contrast( "aacc" ) => "  cc"
>
> I assume that's an error.  The last to letters match.

It's correct. By "ordered" I mean by sort order (ie. alphabetic) so
"aabc" and "aacc" diverge at the thrid letter. Regular, unordered
"contrast" doesn't care about that and would blank the last letter too.

> Also, how are you determining which letter to show for the contrast?

If they are != or == and in the same position. Hmmm.. maybe the Array
form would be a better example:

  [ "a", "a", "b", "c" ].contrast => [ nil, nil, "b", nil ]
  [ "a", "a", "b", "c" ].ordered_contrast => [ nil, nil, "b","c" ]

  [ "a", "a", "b", "c" ].intersect => [ "a", "a", nil, "c" ]
  [ "a", "a", "b", "c" ].ordered_intersect => [ "a", "a", nil, nil ]

Also, maybe the terms 'negative' and 'positive' would have been better
than 'contrast' and 'intersect'.

T.