Counting elements in a list wildcard

[Iain King]

hawkesed wrote:
> If I have a list, say of names. And I want to count all the people
> named, say, Susie, but I don't care exactly how they spell it (ie,
> Susy, Susi, Susie all work.) how would I do this? Set up a regular
> expression inside the count? Is there a wildcard variable I can use?
> Here is the code for the non-fuzzy way:
> lstNames.count("Susie")
> Any ideas? Is this something you wouldn't expect count to do?
> Thanks y'all from a newbie.
> Ed

Dare I suggest using REs?  This looks like something they'de be good
for:

import re

def countMatches(names, namePattern):
  count = 0
  for name in names:
    if namePattern.match(name):
      count += 1
  return count

susie = re.compile("Su(s|z)(i|ie|y)")

print countMatches(["John", "Suzy", "Peter", "Steven", "Susie",
"Susi"], susie)


some other patters:

iain = re.compile("(Ia(i)?n|Eoin)")
steven = re.compile("Ste(v|ph|f)(e|a)n")
john = re.compile("Jo(h)?n")


Iain