How to use the function "table:get" (table extension) when 2 keys are required? - hashtable

Question

I have a file .txt with 3 columns: ID-polygon-1, ID-polygon-2 and distance.
When I import my file into Netlogo, I obtain 3 lists [[list1][list2][list3]] which corresponds with the 3 columns.
I used table:from-list list to create a table with the content of 3 lists.
I obtain {{table: [[1 1] [67 518] [815 127]]}} (The table displays the first two lines of my dataset).
For example, I would like to get the value of distance (list3) between ID-polygon-1 = 1 (list1) and ID-polygon-2 = 67 (list1), that is, 815.
How can I use table:get table key when I have need of 2 keys (ID-polygon-1 and ID-polygon-2) ?
Thanks very much your help.

Answer 1

Using table:from-list will not help you there: it expects "a list of two element lists, or pairs" where the "the first element in the pair is the key and the second element is the value." That's not what you have in your original list.
Furthermore, NetLogo tables (and associative arrays in general) cannot have two keys. They are always just key-value pairs. Nothing prevents the value from being another table, however, and in your case, that is what you need: a table of tables!
There is no primitive to build that directly, however. You will need to build it yourself:
extensions [ table ]
globals [ t ]
to setup
let lists [
[ 1 1 ] ; ID-polygon-1 column
[ 67 518 ] ; ID-polygon-2 column
[ 815 127 ] ; distance column
]
set t table:make
foreach n-values length first lists [ ? ] [
let id1 item ? (item 0 lists)
let id2 item ? (item 1 lists)
let dist item ? (item 2 lists)
if not table:has-key? t id1 [
table:put t id1 table:make
]
table:put (table:get t id1) id2 dist
]
end
Here is what you get when you print the resulting table:
{{table: [[1 {{table: [[67 815] [518 127]]}}]]}}
And here is a small reporter to make it convenient to get a distance from the table:
to-report get-dist [ id1 id2 ]
report table:get (table:get t id1) id2
end
Using get-dist 1 67 will give the 815 result you were looking for.