Thread: need help writing search funtion

I have wrote a database of char arrays and a search function for it, but I need to make it better. I have to allow it to accept '*' as a variable( any number of characters), and '?' as a variable( only one character ).

If anyone has any ideas on how to do this it would be grealy appreciated. Thnx.

How good does it have to be?

Simple, like DOS

For example, if the * can appear only at the end (like match 'foo*'), then all you need do is detect the position of the '*' (use strchr), and then use strncmp instead of strcmp

Code:

char *p = strchr(seach,'*');
if ( p ) {
  // it's got a *
  int pos = p - search;
  found = strncmp( line, search, pos );
} else {
  // no *
  found = strcmp( line, search );
}

Intermediate, like this
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/v2faq/faq16_1.html

Or advanced, like this
http://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/old/texi...regex_toc.html

Hey Salem, is there anyway I could send you my code so you can see exactly what I am doing? I would just post it, but it's for a school project and I really do want anybody to copy my code for it.

Not really - this is an open forum for discussion and learning.

Just post the relevant part - the function which takes a word, and a pattern, and returns true/false, depending on whether the word is matched by pattern (or not)

Code:

int match ( char *word, char *pattern ) {
}

match( "foobar", "foo*" );
would be true

match( "wibble", "zork" );
would be false

Ok, here is what I am searching with now.

*********************************************
printf("Enter the term you would like to search: ");
gets(search_term);

myclrscr();
for ( i=0; i<total; i++ )
{
if ( (strstr(entry[i].fname, search_term)) || (strstr(entry[i].lname, search_term)) || (strstr(entry[i].phone, search_term)) )
{
printf("\nRecord:%d - %s, %s: %s", i+1, entry[i].lname, entry[i].fname, entry[i].phone);

matches_found++;
}
}

printf("\n\n\nThere were %d matches found. Press enter to return to the main menu. ", matches_found );

getchar();
flushall();
*****************************************

'total' is the amount of entries I have, so the for loop runs through testing each one. The if statement is checking each instance of the structure I use to hold the entries.

I didn't quite understand how your first reply worked, and the first link you posted made it sound like that functionality was included with djgpp. Also, I have to be able to include the wildcards anywhere - So if an entry was Robert, I could find it by searching R*t or R?bert.

Thanks for any help.

Sorry about the layout, I tried to indent everything but it didn't work.

Well you want to replace this
if ( (strstr(entry[i].fname, search_term)) || (strstr(entry[i].lname, search_term)) || (strstr(entry[i].phone, search_term)) )

With this
if ( (match(entry[i].fname, search_term)) || (match(entry[i].lname, search_term)) || (match(entry[i].phone, search_term)) )

Where match has the functionality as described above

At the moment, you would have

Code:

int match ( char *word, char *pattern ) {
    return strstr( word, pattern ) == 0;
}

Then start to think about what it means to match against wildcards