OpenEuphoria

Best way to find records in sequences?

• Posted by ZNorQ <znorq at holhaug.com> Jul 07, 2006
• 557 views

Very often I create nested sequences where each record have an unique
index identifying that particular record. Lets say I created a list of
possible error messages in my code;

 MyErrors = 
  {"Syntax error", "Out of memory", "Too much tobacco in keyboard"}

When I want to use a particular error somewhere in the code, I have to
know it's position in the sequence. Now, this error list could be updated
over time as I remember more errors that should have been in it - and
it would be best to add those in the end of the sequence - otherwise the
already existing references to the messages would be wrong.

But, I like to group information together to make it as tidy as possible -
and to make it easy to find it at a later stage. This means that often I
INSERT new elements (in this case - new error messages) inside the sequence,
and not at the end. This ofcourse screws up my code since it would usually
refer to a specific record id to show the correct error.

Lets say I wanted to add a "Memory leak detected" error - I would find a 
suitable place in the sequence;

 MyErrors = {
  {"Syntax error", "Out of memory", "Memory leak detected", 
   "Too much tobacco in keyboard"}}

So - to keep memory messages "grouped", I insert it as the 3rd record. Any
code that refers to MyErrors[3] would now show a memory leak message
instead of "Too much tobacco..". 

Now over to indices - lets do some change to MyErrors;

 MyErrors = {
  --
  {"SYN_SE", "Syntax error"                },
   "ARY_OB", "Out of range"                },
   "MEM_OO", "Out of memory"               }, 
   "MEM_LD", "Memory leak detected"        }, 
   "TOB_TM", "Too much tobacco in keyboard"}}

My problem is that match and find don't work on these, so what I've done
is to make an index table that lists all indices in a "flat" sequence;

  MyErrIdx = {"SYN_SE", "ARY_OB", "MEM_OO", "MEM_LD", "TOB_TM"}.

This would ofcourse have to correspond to the same record id as in MyErrors.

Questions; 
  Do any of you think in the same direction, or am I way off here?
  Is there a better way to do this?

Kenneth

PS! Just in case you where wondering; I do have code that checks if there
are duplicate indices - so that won't be a problem. :)

Oh, by the way, I don't smoke...