{"id":2820,"date":"2014-07-17T07:53:01","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T11:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=2820"},"modified":"2014-07-17T07:53:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T11:53:03","slug":"programming-silliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=2820","title":{"rendered":"Programming Silliness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day I saw this post<\/a>. Although I’m not interested in Java, I was struck by the magic number CAFEBABE<\/code> that marked the beginning of the structure. That got me wondering how many words can be made with the hexadecimal digits A-F<\/code>. Before you read further, ask yourself how you’d go about solving this problem. <\/p>\n

Being a developer, my first thought was, \u201cWell I’ll just write a quick Lisp program.\u201d The only aspect I wasn’t sure of was whether I should use Common Lisp or Emacs Lisp. It was pretty easy to layout the general structure in either language. <\/p>\n

Then I had that \u201cDUH\u201d moment when I realized I was working way too hard. The easy way to solve this problem is <\/p>\n

\n
grep -v [^a-fA-F] \/usr\/share\/dict\/words\n<\/pre>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
 which gave me the results <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
 
A<\/td>\na<\/td>\naa<\/td>\nAb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
aba<\/td>\nabac<\/td>\nabaca<\/td>\nabaff<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
abb<\/td>\nAbba<\/td>\nAbe<\/td>\nabed<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
acca<\/td>\naccede<\/td>\nace<\/td>\nad<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ada<\/td>\nAdad<\/td>\nadad<\/td>\nadd<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Adda<\/td>\nadda<\/td>\nadded<\/td>\nAde<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ade<\/td>\nadead<\/td>\nae<\/td>\naface<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
affa<\/td>\nB<\/td>\nb<\/td>\nba<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
baa<\/td>\nBab<\/td>\nbaba<\/td>\nbabe<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
bac<\/td>\nbacaba<\/td>\nbacca<\/td>\nbaccae<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
bad<\/td>\nbade<\/td>\nbae<\/td>\nbaff<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
be<\/td>\nBea<\/td>\nbead<\/td>\nbeaded<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
bebed<\/td>\nbed<\/td>\nbedad<\/td>\nbedded<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
bedead<\/td>\nbedeaf<\/td>\nBee<\/td>\nbee<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
beef<\/td>\nC<\/td>\nc<\/td>\nca<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
cab<\/td>\ncaba<\/td>\ncabda<\/td>\nCaca<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
cad<\/td>\ncade<\/td>\ncaeca<\/td>\ncaffa<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ce<\/td>\ncede<\/td>\ncee<\/td>\nD<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
d<\/td>\nda<\/td>\ndab<\/td>\ndabb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
dabba<\/td>\ndace<\/td>\ndad<\/td>\nDada<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
dada<\/td>\ndade<\/td>\ndae<\/td>\ndaff<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
de<\/td>\ndead<\/td>\ndeaf<\/td>\nDeb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
deb<\/td>\ndecad<\/td>\ndecade<\/td>\ndee<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
deed<\/td>\ndeedeed<\/td>\ndeface<\/td>\nE<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
e<\/td>\nea<\/td>\nebb<\/td>\necad<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ecca<\/td>\nEd<\/td>\nEdda<\/td>\nedea<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
efface<\/td>\nF<\/td>\nf<\/td>\nfa<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Faba<\/td>\nFabaceae<\/td>\nfacade<\/td>\nface<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
faced<\/td>\nfad<\/td>\nfade<\/td>\nfaded<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
fae<\/td>\nfaff<\/td>\nfe<\/td>\nfed<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
fee<\/td>\nfeed<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
 Sadly, cafe<\/code> isn’t in the system dictionary on my MacBook but the method stands. <\/p>\n
 The moral here is that we developers should remember that not every problem is a nail. Now that I think about it, this is the exact same point that I made two years ago<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other day I saw this post. Although I’m not interested in Java, I was struck by the magic number CAFEBABE that marked the beginning of the structure. That got me wondering how many words can be made with the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-2820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2821,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions\/2821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}