Lesson 15 · Best first - Build a Fuzzy Finder

Best first

Scoring earns its keep only when the best matches rise to the top. Today you sort the results so the highest score comes first - the moment the finder starts to feel smart.

The goal

Sort the results so the highest-scoring candidate appears first.

Start here - the target

TO DO

Scenario: Ordering results by score

Giventhe candidates ["a_xab", "xab", "ab"] and the query "ab"

Whenrank sorts its results

Thenthe order is "ab" (score 40), "xab" (score 39), "a_xab" (score 37) - highest score first, regardless of input order

Background

This is the lesson where a filter becomes a finder. Filtering told you which candidates match; scoring told you how well; sorting puts that to use by floating the strongest matches to the top. Type ab and the tight ab outranks the looser xab, which outranks the scattered a_xab - exactly the order a person would pick by eye, now produced by the numbers.

Use a stable sort. When two candidates tie on score, a stable sort leaves them in their original relative order, which keeps results from jumping around unpredictably and gives the next lesson a clean base to layer real tie-breaking on. Everything visible about the finder’s “intelligence” comes from this step: the same candidates, reordered by match quality.

Make it work

// Sort results by Score descending. Keep it a stable sort so equal
// scores retain a predictable order (tie-breaking is the next lesson).
sort.SliceStable(results, func(i, j int) bool {
  return results[i].Score > results[j].Score
})

CheckpointDONE

The best matches now come first. Commit and stop here.