I can't remember which monk asked for a word search puzzle program a couple of months ago. I did one in C++ 4 years ago for school, and now ported it to Perl. The solution is kinda wordy and could probably be cleaned up, but I thought I'd post it anyway. One observation was that coding in Perl was not as easy as I thought. Data structures created some pretty intense code and I was surprised that the C++ solution was cleaner in some ways.
#!/usr/bin/perl # wsp_r.pl Word search puzzle, Assignment 1 use strict; use warnings; # Constants use constant N => 0; use constant NE => 1; use constant E => 2; use constant SE => 3; use constant S => 4; use constant SW => 5; use constant W => 6; use constant NW => 7; use constant R => 0; use constant C => 1; use constant TRUE => 1; use constant FALSE => 0; ########################################################### ##################### main ############################ my @words; my @ltrs; read_file(\@ltrs, \@words); search(\@ltrs, \@words); writefile(\@ltrs, \@words); #################### end main ########################### ########################################################### sub step { my ($dir, $r, $c) = @_; if ($dir == N) {return (--$r, $c)} elsif ($dir == NE) {return (--$r, ++$c)} elsif ($dir == E) {return ($r, ++$c)} elsif ($dir == SE) {return (++$r, ++$c)} elsif ($dir == S) {return (++$r, $c)} elsif ($dir == SW) {return (++$r, --$c)} elsif ($dir == W) {return ($r, --$c)} elsif ($dir == NW) {return (--$r, --$c)} else { die "Inside 'step': invalid param\n" } } sub stepback { my ($dir, $r, $c) = @_; if ($dir == N) {return (++$r, $c)} elsif ($dir == NE) {return (++$r, --$c)} elsif ($dir == E) {return ($r, --$c)} elsif ($dir == SE) {return (--$r, --$c)} elsif ($dir == S) {return (--$r, $c)} elsif ($dir == SW) {return (--$r, ++$c)} elsif ($dir == W) {return ($r, ++$c)} elsif ($dir == NW) {return (++$r, ++$c)} else { die "Inside 'stepback': invalid param\n"; } } sub read_file { my ($ltrs, $words) = @_; @ARGV = @ARGV ? @ARGV : ("wp.txt"); # Read in grid of letters my @tmp; while (<>) { last if /^$/; chomp; @tmp = (); for ("\\", split(//, $_), "\\") { push @tmp, { data => $_, solution => FALSE, } } push @$ltrs, [@tmp]; } # Create border my $cols = @tmp; @tmp = (); for (1..$cols) { push @tmp, { data => "\\", solution => FALSE, } } unshift @$ltrs, [@tmp]; # Add Top border push @$ltrs, [@tmp]; # Add Bottom border # Read in words to search for while (<>) { chomp; push @$words, { data => $_, chars => [split //], found => FALSE, beg => [], end => [], } } } sub search { my ($ltrs, $words) = @_; my $end_row = $#{$ltrs} - 1; my $end_col = $#{$ltrs->[0]} - 1; for my $i ( 1..$end_row ) { for my $j ( 1..$end_col ) { for my $idx (0..$#words) { if (! $words->[$idx]{found} && $words->[$idx]{chars}[0] eq $ltrs->[$i][$j]{data +} ) { my ($rows, $cols) = ($i, $j); for my $dir (N..NW) { my $k = 0; ($rows, $cols) = step($dir, $rows, $cols); look($dir, $ltrs, $words, $rows, $cols, $idx, +$k); if (! $words->[$idx]{found} ) { $rows = $i; $cols = $j; } else { $ltrs->[$i][$j]{solution} = TRUE; $words->[$idx]{beg}[R] = $i; $words->[$idx]{beg}[C] = $j; last; } } } } } } } sub look { my ($dir, $ltrs, $words, $row, $col, $idx, $k) = @_; if (++$k != @{ $words->[$idx]{chars} } && $ltrs->[$row][$col]{data} eq $words->[$idx]{chars}[$k] ) { ($row, $col) = step($dir, $row, $col); look($dir, $ltrs, $words, $row, $col, $idx, $k); if ( $words->[$idx]{found} ) { ($row, $col) = stepback($dir, $row, $col); $ltrs[$row][$col]{solution} = TRUE; } } else { if ($k == @{ $words->[$idx]{chars} } ) { $words[$idx]{found} = TRUE; ($row, $col) = stepback($dir, $row, $col); $words->[$idx]{end}[R] = $row; $words->[$idx]{end}[C] = $col; } } } sub writefile { my ($ltrs, $words) = @_; # Print out puzzle letter grid for (my $i = 1; $i < $#{ $ltrs }; ++$i) { for (my $j = 1; $j < $#{ $ltrs->[0] }; ++$j) { print $ltrs->[$i][$j]{data} . ' '; } print "\n"; } # List search words & their location in the grid for (@$words) { print $_->{data}, "\t"; print "R" . $_->{beg}[R] . ' ' . "C" . $_->{beg}[C] . "\t"; print "R" . $_->{end}[R] . ' ' . "C" . $_->{end}[C] . "\n"; } # Print out grid solution for (my $i = 1; $i < $#{ $ltrs }; ++$i) { for (my $j = 1; $j < $#{ $ltrs->[0] }; ++$j) { if ($ltrs->[$i][$j]{solution}) { print $ltrs->[$i][$j]{data} . ' '; } else { print "-" . ' '; } } print "\n"; } } __DATA__ SSOKGCYUQMIEAWT PLIEBXUQNJGDZWT YQGNKHDAXURPMJG ETIHWRONGDAXVSQ NKPIRFADAXVTQOM JHFMACAEYWURPNL JHFDEBZGLLUBXVT RQOMPKIIECHCDFD BZYWSVGBVRORATR QONLKHIHEOAFEDC AZXWTFOSLHVBDDU BARE BIG CLEAR COOL DEAD EMPTY HARD LEVEL LIGHT PIG RED SOFT SPEAR WHITE WRONG

In reply to Word Search Puzzle by Anonymous Monk

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