in reply to Pig Latin

Here's the shortest that I could come up with: 
s/\b((qu|[bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]+)?([a-z]+))/$2?$3.$2."ay":$1."way"/eg
+;

[download]
Points to note: Here's the full breakdown, if anyone's interested: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $test = "that is the time for all good men to come to the aid of th
+eir country.";
$test=~s/
         \b                            # start of word
         (                             # capture all to $1
           (                           # this is $2
             qu                        # word starts with qu
             |                         # or
             [bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]+  # a consonent
           )?                          # but it's optional
           (                           # this is $3
              [a-z]+                   # rest of word
           )
         )
        /$2 ? $3.$2."ay" : $1."way" /xeg;   # if $2 evaluates as true 
+then 
                                            # put it at end of word an
+d add "ay"
                                            # otherwise, just add "way
+"
print $test;

[download]
Cheers,
Ovid

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Perl Golf (was RE: (Ovid) RE: Pig Latin)
by japhy (Canon) on Jul 23, 2000 at 23:12 UTC
    I'm just playing through. I made your code case-insensitive and did a bit of regex tomfoolery. 
    # updated (5 years later!)
s/\b(qu|[^\W0-9aeiou_]+)?([a-z]+)/$1?"$2$1ay":"$2way"/ieg;

    [download]
    I don't see the need to save 3 pieces of data. And using [^\W0-9_] is shorter than [bcdf..xyz] and [b-df-hj-np-tv-z] and it forces the reader to think for a second. ;). And I saved space with the quoting on the RHS.

    Score: 53.

    $_="goto+F.print+chop;\n=yhpaj";F1:eval
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      japhy, originally, I was constructing a rather longer and optimized script to do the pig latin conversion. Then I went back and reread vroom's specs. First, I didn't use the /i modifier because he said we were to assume the data was lowercase and he wanted the shortest possible code.

      The reason I am using three backreferences is because the data saved to $2 is tricky. Your equivalent (ignoring the "qu" problem) is [^\W0-9_]. This allows you to match all alphabeticals but does no discrimination for vowels. However, you apeared to notice this when you mentioned [b-df-hj-np-tv-z]. Therefore, I suspect that you intended the following and (assuming you did intend this) I offer you kudos for a clever regex: 

      s/\b(qu|[^\W0-9_aeiou]+)?([a-z]+)/$1?"$2$1ay":"$2way"/ieg;

      [download]
      I also noticed that, in this case, using the /i modifier ignored vroom's "lowercase" spec, but does result in a shorter regex.

      Cheers,
      Ovid

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[d/l]
        Oh, d'oh, I'm silly. I meant to add 'aeiou' to the character class, I really did, since that was the whole reason I introduced it. :) And I'm sorry I hadn't checked vroom's specs.

        By the way, since Pig Latin does not produce a 1-to-1 mapping of normal strings to PL-strings, you can't reasonably reverse this process. Example: flea and leaf both go to eaflay.

        $_="goto+F.print+chop;\n=yhpaj";F1:eval
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Re^2: Pig Latin
by Sartak (Hermit) on May 05, 2006 at 03:42 UTC
    [bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]+ can become [bcdfghj-np-tv-z]+ to save six bytes without loss of accuracy.
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