From: John Carter <john.carter@...>
Date: 2005-10-07T05:25:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Golf on Lazy T9 Words.

On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, wannes wrote:

> On 06/10/05, John Carter <john.carter@tait.co.nz> wrote:
> If you wanted this to be a rubyquiz, you better could have send it to
> James Edward Gray II.

Didn't even occur to me. Just thought it was a nice simple problem to 
which I personally wanted the answer. Since I thought it would be fun, I 
wondered if anyone else would have fun with it. RubyQuiz must have been 
somewhere in my subconscious since I borrowed his "wish to accept" tag 
line.

> A similar quiz has allready been done in the
> past. Check out http://rubyquiz.com and look around.

There was a quiz to design a "better than multitap" algorithm, not given 
T9, what is the longest word with shortest taps.

I started crafting a solution to my problem when I got lost with wheels in 
wheels in wheels and stopped.

I then went for a walk to buy milk and had the notion that regexes would 
be good....
=========================================================
a=Hash.new('')
IO.read('/usr/share/dict/words').scan(/[a-z]+/i){|m|
    x={}

    m.upcase.tr( 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',
                 '22233344455566677778889999').each_byte{|c|
      x[c]=c
    }
    z=x.keys.size
    i=a[z]
    a[z]=m if i.size < m.size
}
p a
=======================================================
But than gave just the one example, so I extended it to give me all words 
of the maximum length..
=============================================================
# I love the flexibility of the Ruby hash constructor. I use that 
# feature all the time.
a=Hash.new([''])

# Hah! I didn't even know about ARGF. Ah well, I learn something
# new every day!

# I should of used \w instead of [a-z], that would have been shorter.
IO.read('/usr/share/dict/words').scan(/[a-z]+/i){|m|
   x={}

   # I chose upcase instead of downcase, saved me 2 chars. ;-)
   # Hmm, perhaps I should have done the tr before the scan.
   m.upcase.tr( 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',
                '22233344455566677778889999').each_byte{|c|
     x[c]=c
   }

   # Somehow I sure if I was smarter there would be a shorter way of
   # finding the number of uniq chars in a string. Especially
   # as I could make those chars whatever I like.

   z=x.keys.size

   i=a[z]
   if i[0].size < m.size
     a[z]=[m]
   elsif i[0].size == m.size
     # Now this is actually quite subtle.
     # Who says ruby doesn't have pointers?
     # I have another fun problem in my head that relates to that.
     i << m
   end
}
a.keys.sort.each{|k| puts "#{k}\n\t#{a[k].sort.uniq.join("\n\t")}\n"}

The result is...

1
 	deeded
2
 	blackball
 	blackjack
 	depressed
 	depresses
 	preferred
 	redressed
 	redresses
 	repressed
 	represses
3
 	shepherdesses
4
 	presumptuousness
5
 	transubstantiation
6
 	contradistinctions
 	disenfranchisement
 	disproportionating
 	hypersensitivities
 	misinterpretations
 	misrepresentations
7
 	counterrevolutionaries
 	electroencephalographs
8
 	counterrevolutionary
 	uncharacteristically

It is interesting that the 8 key words are shorter than the 7.

John Carter

The Cybernetic Entomologist - cyent@xtra.co.nz

http://geocities.yahoo.com/cy_ent

I'm becoming less and less convinced of humans as rational beings.
I suspect we are merely meme collectors, and the reason meme is only
kept on to help count our change.


John Carter                             Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639
Tait Electronics                        Fax   : (64)(3) 359 4632
PO Box 1645 Christchurch                Email : john.carter@tait.co.nz
New Zealand

Carter's Clarification of Murphy's Law.

"Things only ever go right so that they may go more spectacularly wrong later."

From this principle, all of life and physics may be deduced.