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From: goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: Re: a small problem
Message-ID: <1991Jan10.055744.15170@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 91 05:57:44 GMT
References: <9101100454.AA01800@internal.apple.com>
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In <9101100454.AA01800@internal.apple.com> nevin@APPLE.COM (Nevin Liber) writes:
>
>> ...what I
>> want to do is know the total number of characters in s which are
>> used for these substrings, however many times they may occur.
>
>The following will do the job:
>
>	iCharacterCount := 0
>	every find(sSubString := !SSubStrings, sLine) do
>		iCharacterCount +:= *sSubString

This is nice.  One thing, though, might be added:  If any of the strings
in set SSubStrings overlap, then the above solution won't work the way
Norman wants it to.  The substrings variable needs to be a list, with the
elements prioritized in some way (e.g. longest strings first):

	count := 0
	s ? while tab(find(tmp := !substrings)) do
		count +:= *=tmp

I haven't tested this code fragment.  Oh no! :-)

Question:  What is the best way to take a list of strings, remove those
strings which are substrings of some other string in the list, and then
sort by length?

-Richard (goer@sophist.uchicago.edu)