Re: [FWP] 4 Consecutive Letters

[Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2000 at 02:48:06AM -0700, Daniel Chetlin wrote:
> On the same subject, I was asked recently to think of a word which had 4
> consecutive letters (like abcd or ghij). Failing miserably to think of one, I
> decided it would be good for golf. The solution I came up with is pretty long,
> and I bet a better one exists, so I'm throwing out the challenge.
> 
> perl -wne 'sub f{chr(ord($1)+pop)};print if/(.)(??{f(1)})(??{f(2)})(??{f(3)})/'
>     /usr/dict/2words

I don't like those newfangled regex features.  Why, back when I was a
newbie...  :D

Here's my first solution:

  perl -ne'@a=a..z;for$i(0..22){print,last if/@{[$a[$i]..$a[$i+3]]}/x}'

And a slightly shorter one:

  perl -ne'for$i(97..119){print,last if/@{[map chr,$i..$i+3]}/x}'


> BTW, no words that fit that pattern are in the standard Linux
> /usr/dict/words -- I had to use a different word list that I found
> elsewhere.  But reasonably common words that fit do exist.

Ah, I've found a few.


Ronald

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