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in reply to Hangman - Hanging with Friends

# Scrabble distribution our %letter_distribution = qw( a 9 b 2 c 2 d 4 e 12 f 2 g 3 h 2 i 9 j 1 k 1 l 4 m 2 n 6 o 8 p 2 q 1 r 6 s 4 t 6 u 4 v 2 w 2 x 1 y 2 z 1 ) ;

You never use this variable anywhere so why is it here?



sort { score_word($a) cmp score_word($b) }

score_word() returns a numeric value so that should be:

sort { score_word($a) <=> score_word($b) }

And if you used a Schwartzian Transform you wouldn't have as much overhead on all those subroutine calls.

# search for matching words my @possible_words = map $_->[ 1 ], sort { $a->[ 0 ] <=> $b->[ 0 ] } map length() == length( $word_pattern ) && pattern_word( $word_pat +tern, $_ ) ? [ score_word( $_ ), $_ ] : (), @dictionary;


sub score_word { my ($word) = @_ ; my $points = 0 ; my @letters = split //, $word ; $points += $letter_points{$_} foreach @letters ; return $points ; }

You could use List::Util::sum and reduce that to:

use List::Util qw/ sum /; sub score_word { sum( @letter_points{ split //, $_[ 0 ] } ) }


my %deny_letters = map { $_ => 1 } split(//, $pattern) ; my @p = split //, $pattern ;

Why split the same thing twice:

my @p = split //, $pattern ; my %deny_letters = map { $_ => 1 } @p ;