Re: How to check if letters are in a string?

[Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>]

On 2015-07-18, Nasser M. Abbasi <nma@12000.org> wrote:
> On 7/18/2015 4:00 AM, Trish Cayetano wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> How do you check if (exact number of) letters are in a string?
>>
>> 1. This example should PASS because every letter is found in the string
>> LETTERS: HID
>> STRING:  HIDDEN
>>
>
> I do not follow. The 'D' in 'letters' occur 1 time but it occurs
> 2 times in 'string'. So this is not the _exact number_ of
> letters in the string.
>
>> 2. This example should FAIL because the letters contain 2 N's but the string only has 1 N.
>> LETTERS: NINE
>> STRING:  HIDDEN
>>
>
> So why now this fails when 'letters' has more N's than in string, but
> the first case did not fail when 'letters' had less D's than in string?
>
> I think your problem specifications is not clear.
>

I think the characters in "letters" are supposed to be a subset of the
characters in "string", 

To the OP: a couple of ways immediately come to mind.

1) Maintain a seperate boolean array whose size is the size of "string".
Set the position to true when a letter matches and ignore that position
when checking for subsequent letters.

or

2) Assign "string" to a temporary string and remove the matching character
from each pass. You use that temporary string when searching for subsequent
letters.

I really hope I have not just done your homework for you. :-)

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world