QIF syntax question

[Linas Vepstas]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 01:34:57PM -0400, Paul Lussier was heard to remark:
> 
> In a message dated: Tue, 09 Oct 2001 12:15:02 CDT
> Linas Vepstas said:
> 
> >Hi,
> 
> Hi, I was wondering when you'd drop in on this conversation :)
> 
> >Myabe we need to update the matching algorithms to match any substring,
> >and not just the string starting at the begining.  I see nothing wrong
> >with doing that ... We'll need a fancier indexing scheme ...
> 
> I suppose.  I wasn't sure it would be possible, or as easy as you 
> make it sound.

The string matching is all done in one file, using this funny tree to
look things up, last I remember it.  So its perfectly modular, you 
have a very limited amount of code to change.

> For fear of being verbally thrashed and beaten for suggesting yet 
> another external dependancy, do I dare ask if using something like
> glimpse would work?

Smack. Wham. Whip. Overkill.  Just need to index substrings in strings.
I remember seeing a magzine article about an efficient way of doing
this; something about creating a sorted list of all substrings, but
storing a pointer to the start of the string ... it was both very fast
and very space-efficient.  Maybe 30-50 lines of code.  Don't use
glimpse.  But maybe there's a code-snippet on the sourceforge
code-snippet collection ...

> >Well, maybe we should fix cut & paste to work on whole transactions,
> >rather than on individual cells.   
> 
> What about allowing for the creation of aliases/abbreviations to 
> represent either payees, account names, and/or entire transactions?
> This would really make my day.  I have a tendancy to frequent the 
> same places, so, for example, I'm always stopping at the same diner 
> for breakfast, resulting in both a full stomach a split transaction 
> comprised of $X allocated Expenses:Food:Dining, ($X * 0.15) allocated to 
> Expenses:Food:Dining:Tips, and ($X * 0.05) allotcated to 
> Expenses:Tax:Sales.  So, an abbreviation for the entire transaction 
> of, say, "bob" (for Bob's Diner) to expand out to this particular 
> breakdown would be great.  

This is harder. This requires writing new gui code to define & edit 
the abgreviations. It requires saving/memorizing the transactions.  
etc. so its much more work...

--linas


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