Fix a string from supplied data

Question

Let's say I have these items in a list full of strings:

Cash
Cheque
Postal Order
Credit Card
Bank Transfer
etc... etc... etc...

I found a nice thing called "LevenshteinDistance". This is working up to some point. It does not always return the correct string if I type something wrong.

I am thinking of going to the Regex side to get this.

Basically I want to type, for example, "chq" and it should return "Cheque".

I have this code to try this but it is also not working correctly:

foreach (string entry in lsbSuppliedData.Items)
{
    entr = entry.Trim().Replace(" ", "");
    regex = new Regex("^[" + inputString + "]+$", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

    if (regex.IsMatch(inputString))
    {
        proposal = entry;
        //break;
    }
}

Can someone please just help me into the right direction? I have a list with the items it should suggest, which at max would be 20 items (not very big, so performance is not a big issue).

Are you looking for a soundex search function like this? http://stackoverflow.com/a/22464377/215752 — Hogan, Apr 14 '14 at 13:43

Selman Genç · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-14T14:06:20.207

3

You can try this:

var words = new[] { "Cash", "Cheque" ... };

string search = "chq";

var results = words
             .Where(x => x.ToLower()
                        .Intersect(search.ToLower().Distinct()).Count() >= search.Length);

This would work and ignore the case sensitivity and also the order of letters for ex if you type cqh it will still return Cheque, if you don't want this to happen, it requires much more work.Also you can change Where to First or FirstOrDefault if you want to get a single result instead of all matches.

Update: Here is another version that doesn't ignore the order of letters:

var result = words
            .FirstOrDefault(x => x.ToLower().Where(search.Contains).SequenceEqual(search));

edited Apr 14 '14 at 14:06

answered Apr 14 '14 at 13:39

Selman Genç

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You could use `First()` and then with lazy evaluation it will run faster – Hogan Apr 14 '14 at 13:39
@Hogan I assume he is looking for more than one result – Selman Genç Apr 14 '14 at 13:40
Ah ok, But you are just returning a true false anyway so is there a semantic difference? – Hogan Apr 14 '14 at 13:41
@Jonesy good point thanks. Hogan I think OP wants to get result string,not just true of false, _Basically I want to type, for example, "chq" and it should return "Cheque"._ _ – Selman Genç Apr 14 '14 at 13:44
I am getting errors at ToLower and search. I am not very familiar with LINQ (if this is linq). – Fred Apr 14 '14 at 13:54

Fix a string from supplied data

1 Answers1