word choice - "Approach to" or "approach for"


When do you use approach for, and when do you use approach to?


(How can I answer questions like this? In which dictionaries should I look? How do I google it?)



The reason to ask this question is an argument with my friend: what's right, approach to caching or approach for caching? (Caching in the software engineering sense)


(But I'd like to hear more general answer.)



Answer



approach to NOUN


When used as a verb, 'approach' takes no preposition. However, when as a noun, it requires a preposition, otherwise you end up with two nouns in a row: "The pilot's approach [ ] the runway was too low." The question is which preposition is most appropriate.


Using the more literal example I gave above, it's easy to see why 'to' is more appropriate than 'for', and this still holds for more abstract uses:


"my approach to the problem"


"an iterative approach to the travelling salesman problem"


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