Wanted -- ambiguous lookup routine.

[Gisle Hannemyr]

I am storing a number of strings (composed of several words) in a list
in RAM.  For instance (three strings):

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy
    John Frank Oppenheimer
    Lyndon Bird Johnson

I want to look up a string using an unambiguous abbreviation of the words
in the string.

Ie (given the short list above):
    J F K                   => John Fitzgerald Kennedy
    John Fitzgerald Kennedy => John Fitzgerald Kennedy
    L                       => Lyndon Bird Johnson
    J F                     => (error, ambiguous)
    J F L                   => (error, not found)

Typical applications for such a function would be phone directory, or
a completing unambiguous command parser.

Does anyone have a fast C routine that do the above, or know a
clever algorithm to accomplish it.  My main requirement is speed. 

Please mail your replies if possible.  I do not read these groups
regularly.

- gisle hannemyr  (Norwegian Computing Center)
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