Okay.. I was bored and wanted to write some stupid script that made use of the dictionary file. I also really suck at crossword puzzles. So I came up with this little script to help me out.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my  $word_file = '/usr/share/dict/words';
my  @words =  ();
my  $word_length;
my  @tests;

if (@ARGV == 2) {
  $word_length    = shift;
  my $tests       = shift;
  @tests          = split /,/,$tests;
  print "\$word_length = $word_length\n";
  print "\@tests       = @tests\n\n";
}elsif (@ARGV ==1) {
  $word_length    = shift;
  print "\$word_length = $word_length\n";
}else {
  die "usage:   $0 word_len [test1],[test2] etc..\n",
      "         $0 word_len\n\n",
      "example: $0 3 [1=a],[3=s]\n",
      "         find 3 letter word starts with 'a' ends with 's'\n\n",
      "         $0 14\n",
      "         find 14 letter word.\n\n";
}

open (INP, $word_file) or die "Error opening word database: [$word_fil
+e] $!\n";
while (<INP>){
  chomp;
  push @{$words[length]}, lc;  
}
close (INP);

my @chk = get_words($word_length);

die "No Words that long.\n" unless @chk;

foreach my $word (@chk) {
  if (@tests) {
    print "$word\n" if check_word($word,@tests);
  }else{
    print "$word\n"
  }
}

sub check_word {
  my $word    = shift;
  my @tests   = @_;
  my @letters = split //, $word;
  
  foreach my $test (@tests){
    my ($num,$let) = $test =~ /^\[(\d+)=(\w)\]$/;
    --$num;
    return unless $letters[$num] eq $let;
  }
  return 1;
}

sub get_words {
  my $len = shift;
  return @{$words[$len]} if exists $words[$len];
  return;
}
[download]