note ikegami I have a mostly working solution. I found three great test cases: <c> penisland --------- pen island penis land pen is land penis l and pen is l and penis l an d pen is l an d zatxtaz ------- z at x ta z xapenx ------ xa pen x x ape nx </c> <p>I get all but "xa pen x" at the moment &mdash; it prints "x a pen x" &mdash; and I haven't attempted sorting yet. 712392 712392