selecting dictionaries to maximize counts

[Brian Beck]

Steven Bethard wrote:
> I have a list of dictionaries.  Each dictionary holds counts of various 
> 'words', e.g.:
> 
> py> countdicts = [
> ...     dict(a=9, b=9, c=9),
> ...     dict(a=8, b=7),
> ...     dict(a=4, b=5, c=12)]
> 
> I need to select dicts with the constraint that the number of each 
> 'word' totalled over all selected dicts doesn't exceed a given 
> MAX_VALUE.  Right now, I do this by:

Not that you can't still improve performance of course, but this is an 
NP-complete problem if you didn't know, so don't bang your head too hard...

--
Brian Beck
Adventurer of the First Order