Homework & Coursework Questions

Use and complete the template provided. The entire template must be completed. If you don't, your post may be deleted!

1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data:

Script : findword
This script may be invoked as findword char myletters dictionary-file to find a few words (no more than 5) in the 'dictionary-file' that start with the character 'char' and contains the letters in the given word 'myletters'. for example, the command: findword m noel would return melon monel


3. The attempts at a solution (include all code and scripts):

Code:

while read line
do
 grep $1 | grep $2 | head -5 |
 sed 's/"[^$1]"//g' | sed 's/"[^$2]"//g'
done  < /usr/dict/words

Input: findword m noel
Output: immunoelectrophoresis

Desired Output: melon monel

The sed doesn't seem correct, but shows that I want to get rid of all occurances of chars in the word other than the m and noel. does [^$1] work as the ''not in range'' notation?

4. Complete Name of School (University), City (State), Country, Name of Professor, and Course Number (Link to Course):

Villanova, PA, Nadi, CSC8700

Note: Without school/professor/course information, you will be banned if you post here! You must complete the entire template (not just parts of it).

Ambiguous question maybe?

Does only a word starting with "m" and with exactly four characters following which are an exact anagram of "noel" count as a match?
e.g. melon monel

Or does any word starting with "m" and containing all the characters from the string "noel" and "m" in any quantity with any other characters count as a match?
e.g. melanoma

Or some other interpretation?

i read the question incorrectly to begin with, it is suppose to start with the char and have the remaining letters anywhere else in the word. i'm thinking it would be something like grep '^$1' | grep $2 though the grep '^$1' doesn't work with the $1 as the arg. ...

Something like this: Notice the first grep does not have single quotes because this would stop the variable being expanded.
This script searches for words beginning with the prefix then checks the content character by character looking for a match on all the characters. As soon as it finds 5 matches it stops which is much more efficient than processing the whole file.
I don't know a suitable regular expression to match the content letters (though one may exist) ... but I'm not on your course!

Code:

prefix="$1"
content="$2"
hitcount=0
grep \^"${prefix}" /usr/dict/words | while read line
do
        found=""
        echo "${content}"|fold -1|while read content_char
        do
                found=`echo "${line}"|grep "${content_char}"`
                if [ -z "${found}" ]
                then
                        break
                fi
        done
        if [ ! -z "${found}" ]
        then
                hitcount=$((${hitcount} + 1))
                if [ ${hitcount} -gt 5 ]
                then
                        break
                fi
                echo "${line}"
        fi
done