Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!evax!utacfd!letni!mic!convex!convex.COM
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: palindromes
Message-ID: <110907@convex.convex.com>
Date: 13 Dec 90 06:38:09 GMT
Sender: usenet@convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 42

Somewhat in the spirit of Steve Hayman's recent program
(using perl to play with words), I thought of this:

% perl -ne 'chop;print "$_\n" if $_ eq reverse' /usr/dict/words

or as a program to sort them as well:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    while (<>) {
	$word = $_;
	chop;
	y/A-Z/a-z/;
	next unless $_ eq reverse;  # don't put revsrse here as i did
	push(@words, $word);
    } 
    print sort bylen @words;
    sub bylen { length($b) <=> length($a); } 

Run on /usr/dict/words, I get this (abridged):

    Malayalam  Adinida    hallah     alula      rotor      lemel
    deedeed    retter     degged     madam      kelek      radar
    reviver    redder     Ajaja      yaray      Tebet      level
    sooloos    terret     ajaja      civic      siris      rever
    Senones    tebbet     Ababa      Kazak      Arara      refer
    rotator    Kassak     kayak      ululu      arara      mesem
    repaper    kakkak     Alala      tenet      Seres      minim
    murdrum    Hannah     alala      anana      Samas

I had thought there were that were longer ones.  And does anyone else
think my dictionary has funny words in it?  I sure don't know most of
those, but maybe my liberal arts education just isn't what it was 
cracked up to be. :-)

Well, at least now I know that Malayalam is a Dravidian language (???) 
spoken on the Malabar Coast in southeastern Asia. :-)

--tom
--
Tom Christiansen		tchrist@convex.com	convex!tchrist
"With a kernel dive, all things are possible, but it sure makes it hard
 to look at yourself in the mirror the next morning."  -me