Thanks, Peter, that's what I was looking for.
Also, thanks Pete for the advice on using a database. That's what I used in a
past, non-Livecode project, but unless the database can be embedded in the main
stack, I can't use that here.
Peter Bogdanoff
UCLA
On Dec 19, 2012, at 2:33 PM, Peter M. Brigham wrote:
> If you use "find" you'll have to "go invisible" to each substack, as has been
> pointed out, or you'll get each substack flashing to the front. The other
> thing is that the find command will find the first instance of the string in
> each stack, so you will have to use the foundchunk function and to store the
> find then repeat the find/store-chunk routine until all have been found.
>
> The alternative is to use offset. This could be sped up if you know which
> fields are of interest, which you almost certainly will -- you don't want to
> search label fields and other stuff that doesn't contain actual data. If you
> go that route, here's a useful function that returns all the offsets of a
> string in a container. It is quite fast.
>
> function offsets str,container,includeOverlaps
> -- returns a comma-delimited list of all the offsets of str in container
> -- third param is optional:
> -- offsets("xx","xxxxxx") returns "1,3,5" not "1,2,3,4,5"
> -- ie, by default, overlapping offsets are not counted
> -- if you want overlapping offsets then pass "true" in 3rd param
> -- returns 0 if str is not in container
> if str is not in container then return 0
> if includeOverlaps = empty then put false into includeOverlaps
> put empty into offsetList
> put 0 into startPoint
> repeat
> put offset(str,container,startPoint) into thisOffset
> if thisOffset = 0 then exit repeat
> add thisOffset to startPoint
> put startPoint & comma after offsetList
> if not includeOverlaps then
> add length(str)-1 to startPoint
> end if
> end repeat
> return item 1 to -1 of offsetList -- delete trailing comma
> end offsets
>
> You can indeed avoid going to the individual substacks by first setting up a
> list of long id's of fields ("fieldlist") for all the fields of interest in
> all the substacks. Store this as a script local or a customproperty so it's a
> one-time task.
>
> repeat for each item f in fieldlist
> put offsets(tString,f) into tOffsets
> if tOffsets = 0 then next repeat
> repeat for each item i in tOffsets
> put the number of words of char 1 to i of the text of f into nbrWords
> put "…" && (word nbrWords - 3 to nbrWords + 3 of the text of f) && "…"
> into tContext
> -- more scripting to load the context into your display field and
> -- set the linktext of the line to the occurrence found, or
> -- whatever your idea is for the user access to the original occurrence
> end repeat
> end repeat
>
> I strongly suspect this approach will be faster than going to each stack
> invisibly and doing repeated finds.
>
> -- Peter
>
> Peter M. Brigham
> [email protected]
> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
>
>
> On Dec 17, 2012, at 6:54 PM, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:
>
>> I do see that there is much more management with the "offset", however, I
>> believe I can use the offset without having to actually navigate to the
>> other stack, and I found that going to another stack and using the "Find"
>> there unlocks the screen (bad).
>>
>> I want the entire search done in one go with a list of all the found
>> occurrences.
>>
>>
>> On Dec 17, 2012, at 3:45 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>> I do not know if I am understanding you correctly, but my instincts say
>>> that "find" is the right way to go. "Offset" would require more management,
>>> whereas "find" is pretty self reliant.
>>>
>>>
>>> How would you use "offset" over multiple stacks anyway? Navigate to each
>>> card in each stack, and then test each field in turn, noting if the offset
>>> function returned a value or not? Certainly there is a value to this, in
>>> that the "offset" function can be tailored to find multiple instances.
>>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps a mixture of the two, "find" to get quickly to a card that has a
>>> hit, and then "offset" to find multiple instances?
>>>
>>>
>>> Craig Newman
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Peter Bogdanoff <[email protected]>
>>> To: How to use LiveCode <[email protected]>
>>> Sent: Mon, Dec 17, 2012 6:31 pm
>>> Subject: Find vs. Offset
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have a stack with multiple substacks. One of the substacks is a Search
>>> tool to
>>> find text in the other substacks. Given a string to find, it searches the
>>> other
>>> stacks, returns a list of the cards where the string was found (there may
>>> be
>>> multiple hits on the same card), and puts excerpts of the strings of text
>>> (3
>>> words before and after the found chunk) into a field. The user then clicks
>>> on a
>>> line of the field to go to a card where the text was originally
>>> found--there I
>>> do another Find to put the found box around the text.
>>>
>>> Am I right in assuming that I should use the offset function to do the
>>> original
>>> search rather than the Find command?
>>>
>>> I see that when I use the Find command, although I lock the screen, it is
>>> unlocked after going to each stack. Also I suspect it is a much slower
>>> method.
>>>
>>> There is a lot more scripting to do with the offset to search multiple
>>> fields,
>>> and multiple hits in the same field, to I would like to know if this is the
>>> best
>>> method.
>>>
>>> Any experience with this?
>>>
>>> Peter
>>> UCLA
>>>
>>>
>>>
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