[erlang-questions] Help on dictionary search

[Serge Aleynikov]

Try this (from problem statement I assume by a dictionary you mean a 
list rather than the dict module):

remove_pid(Pid, Dict) ->
     remove_pid(Pid, Dict, []).

remove_pid(_Pid, _Dict = [], Acc) ->
     lists:reverse(Acc);
remove_pid(Pid, [{Class, List} | Tail], Acc) ->
     case [P || P <- List, P =/= Pid] of
     [] ->
         remove_pid(Pid, Tail, Acc);
     L  ->
         remove_pid(Pid, Tail, [{Class, L} | Acc])
     end.

[Not tested].


Bob Cowdery wrote:
> I wonder if someone could help me with what I guess must seem a fairly elementary problem. 
> 
> I have a dictionary of the form [{class, [Pid, Pid, Pid ...]}, {class1[...]}, ...]. A given Pid can appear in one or more classes. Given a Pid I want to delete all instances of that Pid from the dictionary and if the class then has an empty list to remove the class. Generally I look up the dictionary by class and don't mind a linear search for the delete as its occational.
> 
> I think it's something like this, but I get lost on the details and don't know how to 'do something' with the head. Do I need to return a new dictionary.
> 
> search({_,[_, Pid, _]}, H|T) ->
>     %% we have a match of the Pid
>     %% do something with it!
> search({_,[_, Pid, _]}, _|T) -> 
>     %% no match so recurse with the rest
>     search ({_,[_, Pid, _]}, T);
> search({_,[_, Pid, _]}, []) -> 
>     ok
> 
> Thanks
> Bob
> 
> 
> 
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