From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2008-02-12T19:54:58+09:00
Subject: Re: non case sensitive searching

On Feb 12, 3:39 am, Robert Klemme <shortcut...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2008/2/12, William James <w_a_x_...@yahoo.com>:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 12, 1:45 am, Robert Klemme <shortcut...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > 2008/2/12, Adam Akhtar <adamtempor...@gmail.com>:
>
> > > > the reg exp. looks good but when i try to apply it to help me romove
> > > > duplicates from a list it doesnt seem to work
>
> > > > list = %w{adam Adam bobby Bobby wild wILd}
> > > > list.sort
>
> > > The line above is ineffective because you do not sort the original list.
>
> > > > list.each_index do |x|
> > > >   list.delete_at(x) if (/list[x]/i =~ list[x+1]) #remove entries which
> > > > have same spelling but in diff. case
> > > > end
> > > > puts ""
> > > > puts list
>
> > > I would use another algorithm because of efficiency:
>
> > > #!/bin/env ruby
>
> > > require 'set'
>
> > > # ensure random order
> > > list = %w{adam Adam bobby Bobby wild wILd}.sort_by { rand }
> > > dups = Set.new
>
> > > p list
> > > list.delete_if {|w| not dups.add? w.downcase }
> > > p list
>
> > We don't need sets for this.
>
> > list = %w{adam Adam bobby Bobby wild wILd}.sort_by { rand }
> >     ==>["wild", "bobby", "Bobby", "wILd", "Adam", "adam"]
> > list.map{|x| x.upcase}.uniq
> >     ==>["WILD", "BOBBY", "ADAM"]
>
> As far as I can see the requirement was to remove duplicates and not
> to output a uniform cased list.

1. My solution removed duplicates.
2. To output a uniform-cased list does no harm since
   case is irrelevant.

Using plain Ruby is shorter, easier, and clearer.
There's no rational reason to require sets.

Learn to use Ruby.  It's a very powerful language;
so powerful, in fact, that I seldom have to use
external libraries.