Good luck, this is exactly the NP-complete Minimum Set Cover problem (which makes me hope it's not homework). The universe is the set of letters, the family of subsets is the dictionary of words. You want to minimize the number of words needed to use all the letters in the alphabet, in other words, the number of subsets needed such that each element in the universe is contained in at least one chosen subset.
You won't be able to do significantly better than brute force, unless an approximation algorithm would also be appropriate for your needs. But with a huge dictionary, the running time is going to be intractable.
-
Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
-
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
-
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
-
Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.
|
