ability to limit the number of results

[derhuerst]

I'd like to implement an autocompletion service for public transport stations. Since no user is going to read through more than 5 autocompletions, I want to limit them. The benefit would be a faster search.

[AdamGaskins]

Can you just break after iterating through the display loop 5 times?

[derhuerst]

My problem is that many more results get computed. My problem is not about displaying the results.

[AdamGaskins]

My understanding of the Bitap algorithm is that it has to process every item to calculate a score for it. The sorting can only happen after this.

For example if you search for egg on this list:

["rEfriGeratorG", "salad", "EGGplant"]

And then cancel the search after it reaches the second item, it will return refrigeratorG as the best match, when if you let it finish, eggplant obviously would have been better.

You could still add a feature that limits the amount of results it spits out, but that's just the same as doing:

var results = fuse.search("stuff");
for(var i = 0; i < results.length; i++) {
    // do stuff to display result

    if(i > 4) break;
}

[derhuerst]

No, you could make the sorting itself more efficient. What I wrote today (for a different purpose) can be used for this as well: hifo.

[jeancroy]

you can do a top-k sorting but I believe most of the time is spent computing score. As AtmoEntity pointed out there's no way out of scoring everything to guarantee showing the best result.

[krisk]

@derhuerst, I am not following. As it has been mentioned, the nature of Bitap is such that you'd have to pre-compute the score of the items against the search term before any sorting can take place. Ergo, I cannot see how Fuse would yield the top n items out of m without having calculated m number of scores.