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Parse a space delimited string into unique columns
I'm trying to figure out a way to tell if any combination of the words
(single space separated) in List A exactly matches any combination of the words in List B (including only matching the exact number of words) I would be happy to use either Excel or Access to work on this... List A -------------- row 1: apple peach pear row 2: bear dog cat row 3: jump rope List B -------------- row 1: rope jump row 2: cat bear dog row 3: pear dog porcupine row 4: apple peach pear grape End Results: -------------- (List B) row 1: rope jump (matches Column A row 3) row 2: cat bear dog (matches Column A row 2) row 3: pear dog porcupine (no match) row 4: apple peach pear grape (no match - too many words in Column B) My idea so far is to do count the words in each column so that I will know if the match is invalid because the number of words in each comparison has to be equal (each string of multiple words uses a single space delimiter). Then I was trying to find a way to put each word (substring) into it's own column, because I think that would allow me to use the Excel Match function to compare a word agains the array of possible words.... Column A: Column B: A B C A B C ----- ------- -------- ----- ------- ------ row1 : bear dog cat cat bear dog If cat in Column B row 1 matched cat in Column A row 1, then incement a counter. If not, I need to compare to Column A row 2 and so forth. Then the whole process repeats, matching Column B's bear to the array - row by row. In the end, if the counter matches the count of words, then we can determine that there was a positive match made for that string in some combination. This was just my initial idea on how to tackle this problem, but I can't parse out the keywords into individual columns to try it. All ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks! |
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