matching strings in a large set of strings

[Terry Reedy]

On 4/29/2010 5:38 AM, Karin Lagesen wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I have approx 83 million strings, all 14 characters long. I need to be
> able to take another string and find out whether this one is present
> within the 83 million strings.

If the 'other string' is also 14 chars, so that you are looking for 
exact matches, and you are doing this repeatedly, you might look to 
match hash values first.