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Unix Dict/grep Solves Left-Side-of-Keyboard Puzzle
destinyland writes "For decades, people have been asking this brain teaser: 'What's the longest word you can type with only the left-hand letters on a keyboard?' The answer is supposed to be 'stewardesses,' but grepping the standard dictionary that ships with Unix reveals
a much better answer. There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand — including one word that's even longer. (The article also quotes a failed novel attempt using nothing but words typed on the keyboard's left side.)"
There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand -- including one word that's even longer.
Ganz falsch!
Devertebrated
Link to the original article next time!
The longest word isn't found in the 'a much better answer' link, but rather the other one, somewhat misleadingly. The word, in case you're interested, is supposed to be 'devertebrated', though the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't recognise it.
How exactly can shorter words include a longer one?
Technology is the new idle. The hope is we will make ourselves seem like a bunch of confused Luddites when we start tagging things technologyispants.
With the added benefit of confusing Haggar's advertising exec's about to roll out their new campaign, "Pants is technology!" with an adorable Russian Blue cat for a spokesperson.
-=Bang Bang=-
The longest word I got was 'redrawerredrawers', which probably indicates that my wordfile is corrupted.
databases were devertebrated after stewardesses were watered
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
From the article:
Technically, the word "reverberated" is just as long, and so is "desegregated" - but they're sometimes disqualified because they require using the past tense.
So past tense is disqualified but plural is ok? What official body is making up these rules?
Personally, I'm much more likely to type "stewardesses" into a search engine when I need to use only one hand... for whatever reason.
"sweaterdresses are great" can be typed entirely with the left hand.
"stewardesses have the greatest assets"
I win! :D
who cares?
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
>The longest word I got was 'redrawerredrawers',
>which probably indicates that my wordfile is corrupted
I think you've found a bug ...
% grep '^redrawer' /usr/share/dict/words
redrawer
redrawerredrawers
redrawers
alternating hand keystrokes are the fastest and least stress-inducing type of keystroke. The fact that so many words in Qwerty can be typed on the same (left) hand and so few can be in Dvorak shows that a larger subset of the Dvorak words alternate, whereas a smaller subset of the Qwerty words do.
need more proof, just do a
then follow that up with a
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
The longest word I can type with my left hand is "okupukupu", you QWERTY-using insensitive clods!
[15:44:56] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{14,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words
[15:44:58] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{13,\}$'
[15:45:04] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{12,\}$'
[15:45:07] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{11,\}$'
[15:45:12] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{10,\}$'
[15:45:16] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{9,\}$'
okupukupu
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
uh huh. Ya know why the unix dictionary file doesn't contain every word in the english language? Because it can't. It's a productive system. There's an infinite number of words.
For example, 'desegregated' means something like: something was segregated and now it isn't. And segregated means that, some time in the past, someone decided to segregate. If they decide to do that again, well then it's resegregated. And what happens to it when you undo that segregation? You get deresegregated. What happens if they decide to segregate again? reresegregated? then dereresegregated? Is there a limit? No. Language is awesome.
How we know is more important than what we know.
bare stewardesses
do not read this line twice.
later, on the same flight, when i caught him in there a second time, i redestewardessed him.
Removing reverberation from a soundtrack, also called echo removal.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Z is a non-contiguous zone with a higher than normal left keyboardyness.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
% grep "^[aoeui',.p;qjkx]*$" /usr/share/dict/british-english-huge | awk '{print length($1) " " $1}' | sort | tail -n1 /usr/share/dict/british-english-huge | awk '{print length($1) " " $1}' | sort | tail -n3
9 okupukupu
% grep "^[dhtnsfgcrlbmwvz]*$"
6 crwths
6 ftncmd
6 mtscmd
I think somebody compromised Debian's servers and added nonsense words to the dictionaries.