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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxss!aaw
From: aaw@pyuxss.UUCP (Aaron Werman)
Newsgroups: net.puzzle
Subject: Re: how many words can you make from gorilla?
Message-ID: <313@pyuxss.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Apr-84 13:05:31 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxss.313
Posted: Thu Apr 19 13:05:31 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Apr-84 01:44:58 EST
References: <1532@vax4.fluke.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 34

-1**.5

word permutation games are boring, unless they lead to insights, so
anyone who tries computer generated answers gets bored real soon and
quits. Brute force techniques in polynomial time/space should not be
used to play games, except by the patient. Other techniques (digram
frequency, or other context sensitive heuristics) are not exhaustive.
Here is an example of a piddling brute force program which will
merrily mutilate /tmp in nonreal time:
# sh WORTHLESS ALGOLAGNIAC PROGRAM
# DO NOT TRY THIS PROGRAM ON COMPUTER-INSTEAD HAND INTERPRET IT
if [ $# != 1 ]; then echo 'Usage: permute <word>'; exit; fi
trap "rm $AFILE $BFILE" 0 2 5
IN=/tmp/p$$
OUT=/tmp/q$$
AWKSCRIPT=' { for (i = length; i >= 0; i--)
	print substr($0,1,i) CHAR substr($0, i + 1) }'
expr $1 : '\(.\).*'>$IN
for LETTER in `expr $1 : '.\(.*\)'|sed 's/./& /g'`
  do	awk "$AWKSCRIPT" CHAR=$LETTER $IN >$OUT
	TEMP=$OUT;OUT=$IN;IN=$TEMP
  done
if [ $TEMP = $OUT ]
  then	cat $OUT
  else	cat $IN
fi
rm $IN $OUT

# after hand running the program on the word of your choice,
# run the output through a bunch of cut(1)s, sort, uniq (all
# by hand, please, computers were not meant for this quantity of I/O)
# you will have your combinations. Rots of Ruck
			{harpo,houxm,ihnp4}!pyuxss!aaw
			Aaron Werman