I don't necessarily see this as a better idea, but possibly an alternative. Do the 5 digit search first and if not found then build a 5 digit list of first 3 digit matches. Why? Divide an conqueor. Then parse the 3 digit match list for 4 and 2 digit matches at the same time. When you get to the end, you now have a list of 2, 3 and 4 digit matches (if there were any). Another approach would be to do this sort of thing in a single pass and match 2 - 5 digits and find the closest match from those. It's a trade off between speed (going to take longer to do all the possibilities at once) versus the odds that someone will enter number that has zero or few (1-2) beginning matches. I'm sure somebody else will have a better answer for you, so take this for what you will.

-THRAK
www.polarlava.com

In reply to Re: Algorythym for searching closest neighbor by THRAK
in thread Algorythym for searching closest neighbor by belize

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.