I need to locate a piece of Windows-compatible commercial software,
shareware, or freeware that will find a particular type of anagram:
Presented with a text file containing a long list of English words,
the software goes through the list and finds all words that can be
anagrammed into another English word. An example of this is the word
"triangles" -- "Triangles" can be anagrammed into the word
"gnarliest," with no letters left over. So, if I feed the software a
word list containing the word "triangles," it should point out that
word to me as one that can be anagrammed. The software MUST be able to
find anagrams from a word list; it can't involve me manually entering
words one by one until it finds an anagram. |
Request for Question Clarification by
webadept-ga
on
12 Feb 2004 09:50 PST
So you want to point this program to a text file, with a list of words
in it, it reads this text file, looking for anagrams for the word you
gave the program. So for the program
step one is to give it Triangles as a word.
step two is load your text file full of words.
step three is wait for words from that text file to pop up, like gnarliest.
Is it okay to have this program at a webpage? Upload the text file and
have it print out the answers?
webadept-ga
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Clarification of Question by
riviera-ga
on
12 Feb 2004 11:20 PST
No. Step One would to point it to the word list. Step Two would be for
it to tell me which words on that list can be anagrammed. For example,
say my word list contains the following words: "triangles," "which,"
"list," and "my." It would report to me that "triangles" and "list"
can be anagrammed. ("List" can be anagrammed to "slit" or "silt.")
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Request for Question Clarification by
webadept-ga
on
13 Feb 2004 03:24 PST
So the program needs it's own dictionary, which it uses to check your
list of words, to see if a possible anagram is available for the word.
This isn't that hard to put together (in fact I have a huge database
of words I made last year for a question, using all the works of
Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and a few other books), but it does present
the problem of computer computational resources being used at a rather
alarming rate (we are talking 1000's of queries for average sized
words), on a web server (unfortunately). Darn, this was looking like a
fun little util to put on my server too.
well.. unless I think of something, I'm going to have to back out of
this one. Perhaps one of the other researchers can point out a tool
for you, which I didn't find.
Good luck, and I?m still impressed with the idea, so I will be thinking about it.
webadept-ga
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Request for Question Clarification by
webadept-ga
on
13 Feb 2004 03:31 PST
ya know what? hmmm.. I'm still open to any other researcher taking
this.. but I did have a thought. MySQL allows queries using what is
called regex's. These are fun little things, and if I used that, with
a good indexing of the words, loaded your list in a data file, and
indexed that, then ran the query using the regex, it could bring the
speed up a great deal and keep the server cool as well.
I won't be able to look at this until next week, I've got a busy
weekend coming up, but this sounds like it might work, so I'll give it
a try and let you know how it went. No promises or even the hint of
one here, okay? but ...
webadept-ga
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Clarification of Question by
riviera-ga
on
13 Feb 2004 06:51 PST
Yes, either the program would need its own dictionary to compare the
anagrammed words to, OR, even better, it could duplicate the
user-supplied list and then compare it to itself. (I have a pretty
thorough English word list I could send you.) Speed of the anagramming
process is not an issue for me; I have an extra computer I could set
aside and let run until it's finished. I would mostly be looking for
anagrams of about 7 to 10 letter words.
I would think this would be an extremely useful utility to word-game
enthusiasts. I wish I could pay more if someone is considering writing
a program to do this, but right now I can only tip $10 for something
that does what I need -- a bit higher if it were a Windows-compatible
program I could run at home rather than use via a Web site.
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