Question

Lets say I have a string ‘COLIN’.

The numeric value of this string would is worth:

3 + 15 + 12 + 9 + 14 = 53.

So

A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, and so on.

I have no idea how to even start in F# for this.

let mutable nametotal = 0 let rec tcalculate name =     name.ToString().ToCharArray()     |> Seq.length 

Here is what I have so far. The seq.length is just there for testing to see if the toCharArray actually worked.

Answer 1

If the ‘mapping’ is more arbitrary, you could use a strategy like the code below, where you can specify a data structure of what value each letter maps to.

#light  let table = [     'C', 3     'O', 15     'L', 12     'I', 9     'N', 14     ]  let dictionary = dict table  let Value c =      match dictionary.TryGetValue(c) with     | true, v -> v     | _ -> failwith (sprintf 'letter '%c' was not in lookup table' c)  let CalcValue name =     name |> Seq.sum_by Value  printfn 'COLIN = %d' (CalcValue 'COLIN')