Re^5: Challenge: 8 Letters, Most Words

in reply to Re^4: Challenge: 8 Letters, Most Words
in thread Challenge: 8 Letters, Most Words

I did some more analysing the 2of12inf.txt dictionary and for words of maximum 8 characters, this is the maximum number of the same characters that can exist in any one word:

  a => 4,
  b => 3,
  c => 3,
  d => 4,
  e => 4,
  f => 4,
  g => 4,
  h => 3,
  i => 3,
  j => 2,
  k => 3,
  l => 4,
  m => 3,
  n => 4,
  o => 4,
  p => 3,
  q => 1,
  r => 4,
  s => 5,
  t => 3,
  u => 4,
  v => 2,
  w => 3,
  x => 2,
  y => 3,
  z => 4,
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In other words, choose all combinations of any 8 chars out of the following string: "aaaabbbcccddddeeeeffffgggghhhiiijjkkkllllmmmnnnnoooopppqrrrrssssstttuuuuvvwwwxxyyyzzzz" and run your dictionary against each of these and your search is exhaustive.

Of course that is still about 2.14 E15 combinations to check, but many of these will be the same. So, perhaps someone with more mathematical skills than I can write an efficient generator for these combinations that does not have to go through them all to weed out the duplicates.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

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