[QUIZ] Word Chains (#65)

[Ruby Quiz]

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Suggestion: A [QUIZ] in the subject of emails about the problem helps everyone
on Ruby Talk follow the discussion.

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When someone asked for a set of exercises on Ruby Talk this week, one of the
answers was to check out the Code Katas by Dave Thomas. I'm a big fan of those
problems myself, so let's do one of them.

This week's quiz is to write a program that takes two words as program
arguments. The words will be the same length. Please also support a -d
command-line option that can be used to switch dictionary files (one word per
line), but it's fine to use a reasonable default for your system.

The output of your program is to be a word chain, printing one word per line.
The first word in the chain is the first argument to the program and the last
word is the other argument. All other words in the chain vary by exactly one
letter from the words surrounding it. If a chain can not be formed from the
arguments using the selected dictionary, print a simple error message.

Here are some sample runs of my solution, so you can see how chains look:

$ ruby word_chain.rb work play
work
pork
pory
pony
piny
piky
puky
puly
paly
paty
katy
kath
hath
hash
pash
push
puss
poss
post
pout
prut
prat
plat
play
$ ruby word_chain.rb lead gold
lead
load
goad
gold
$ ruby word_chain.rb love hate
love
hove
have
hate

Aim for the shortest paths if you can find them (the above examples may not be
them) and fast running times.

 

[Thomas Kirchner]

When someone asked for a set of exercises on Ruby Talk this week, one
of the answers was to check out the Code Katas by Dave Thomas. I'm a
big fan of those problems myself, so let's do one of them.

Pardon me if I'm missing something, James, but wasn't this Quiz #44?

http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz44.html

Tom

 

[Patrick Hurley]

d=E9j=E0 vu?

http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz44.html
(hope I am not violating rule #1)

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Pardon me if I'm missing something, James, but wasn't this Quiz #44?

http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz44.html

<laughs> Boy I'm glad some of you are paying attention, because I'm
obviously not!

Sorry, I get lots of duplicate ideas sent in. Looks like this is the
first one I failed to catch.

I'll get a another quiz out later today...

James Edward Gray II

 

[Thomas Kirchner]

<laughs> Boy I'm glad some of you are paying attention, because I'm
obviously not!

No problem - we appreciate the work you put in! Love the quizzes, even
if I'm usually quiet about them.

I'll get a another quiz out later today...

Shucks. I was hoping to do this one (avoiding the summary/solution, of
course) to make up for missing the last

Tom

 

[Robert Retzbach]

d=E9j=E0 vu?

http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz44.html
(hope I am not violating rule #1)


=20

Haha!
The page turned!
I made once a submission to make a quiz to build regexp automatically to=20
match a range of numbers.
JEG2 told meto look at quiz4

errare humanum est
-
~waiting

 

[James Edward Gray II]

I made once a submission to make a quiz to build regexp
automatically to match a range of numbers.
JEG2 told meto look at quiz4

My wife asked me a while back, "Hey, have you done a Su Doku quiz?"
I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit that I had to go look to
answer her.

James Edward Gray II