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From: sierra@lll-tis.arpa (Frankie Sierra)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Which alphabet letter is less used?
Message-ID: <21625@lll-tis.arpa>
Date: Wed, 29-Jul-87 19:01:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: lll-tis.21625
Posted: Wed Jul 29 19:01:07 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Jul-87 06:21:18 EDT
Expires: Sat, 15-Aug-87 03:00:00 EDT
References: <2598@husc6.UUCP> <2599@husc6.UUCP>
Reply-To: sierra@lll-tis.arpa (Frankie Sierra)
Distribution: world
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 15
Keywords: letter ascii
Summary: Letters Frequency

I am working on a pattern matching routine for a header signature.
To avoid running through many possible matches, I will like to
start the looked-for pattern with an ASCII character that is rarely
used on any kind of text file.  The only restriction is that the
character must be a printable one (no control chars allowed).
Thus my question is:

    1. Which alphabetic letter is the least frequently used
       (among lower and upper case on text files)?
    2. Which special character ('@#$%^...etc) is the least
       frequently used on electronic mail files?


Frankie Sierra
sierra@lll-tis.ARPA