Shell Programming and Scripting

play   ______    table
hair    ______    ball

time  (playtime, timetable)
pin  (hairpin, pinball)

/usr/dict/words
or
/usr/share/dict/words

spell_game play table

playtime, timetable

$ cat spell_game
#!/bin/bash

matches=`awk '
(/^ball/ || /ball$/) && !(/^ball$/||/s$/||/ing$/||/ed$/||/er$/) {
  gsub(/ball/,"")
  if(length($0)>1) {print $0}
  $0=""
}

(/^hair/ || /hair$/) && !(/^hair$/||/s$/||/ing$/||/ed$/||/er$/) {
  gsub(/hair/,"")
  if(length($0)>1) {print $0}
  $0=""
}' /usr/share/dict/words | sort -d | uniq -d`

matchcnt=`echo "$matches" | wc -l | awk '{print $1}'`

if [ ${matchcnt} -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "Sorry, I can't solve this one."
  exit 2
fi

if [ ${matchcnt} -eq 1 ]; then
  echo There was "${matchcnt}" possibility: "${matches}"
else
  echo There were "${matchcnt}" possibilities: "${matches}"
  exit 0
fi

$ cat spell_game
#!/usr/bin/bash

WORD="/usr/dict/words"

for i in `grep "^$1." $WORD`
do
   KEY="${i#$1}"
   NEW="${i#$1}$2"
   grep "^$NEW$" $WORD > /dev/null && echo "$i, $NEW"
done
$ ./spell_game play table
playtime, timetable
$ ./spell_game hair ball
hairpin, pinball
$ ./spell_game high lay
highway, waylay

for i in `egrep '^play.*' /usr/dict/words | sed 's/^play//' `;do
egrep "^${i}table$" /usr/dict/words > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
echo $i
fi
done