Talk:Word search

From Rosetta Code

Not sure how important the output format is

The task did not really say much about how the result should be displayed. Not sure if that matters... --Rdm (talk) 04:13, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

As long as you can check the result, it's fine. -- I get the impression that in your solution there isn't much overlap, which wouldn't disqualify it, but maybe I should specify that? Fwend (talk) 10:31, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I think I will require at least 10 overlaps. (I'll have to change my own code as well) Fwend (talk) 10:36, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Overlap query

If you have "din" and "other", can a "not" be planted on all-existing letters, given that they are bits of different words? Would there be a difference between straight-line instances of that kind and orthogonal ones? Pete Lomax (talk) 14:57, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that's allowed. The only restriction given is that you cannot embed a word completely in another single word, like putting "one" inside "done". Fwend (talk) 21:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Maybe I should drop that restriction because it complicates things, and my own (Java) code doesn't even fully support it. Fwend (talk) 00:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. Maintaining lists of word indexes for each cell and checking the intersection is empty, would be overkill. Pete Lomax (talk) 04:30, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
It's not that hard to implement though: just check if a word can be contained in the list of currently placed words. If it can, require that when it is placed that it occupy at least one previously unoccupied position. --Rdm (talk) 15:25, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
That's what the Java code does, but it still allows a larger word to embed a smaller word later. Imagine that you've placed the word "one", then the word "done" could be laid over it.Fwend (talk) 17:06, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I overlooked that possibility. Still... you could pregenerate a list of words (maybe 50 of them) at the start and run the containment check against that list. --Rdm (talk)
Sure, you could check it, but the task already has plenty of constraints, I don't think this one is really necessary. Fwend (talk) 18:37, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Bad link to word list

The task description contains a broken link to the word list 'unixdict.txt'. Perhaps the link could be changed to a working link for the original file that can be found at the internet archive, 'The Wayback Machine', unixdict.txt. --Demivec (talk) 08:05, 18 January 2019 (UTC)