Searching a Dictionary file - GameCreators Forum

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Thomas John Gorham

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Joined: 23rd Jun 2018

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Posted: 22nd Dec 2019 04:52

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Hi guys im attempting to make a simple game for my Dad.

The premise is simple, you get generated 3 letters and you have to make the longest possible word with those 3 letters in a row.

I dont code often, I havent touched AppGameKit in over a year (eeek) , last thing I made was a simple space invaders game and it took me several weeks.

But anyway I have dived into it. I have downloaded a dictionary txt file with over 100,000 words. I would love to see a little coding example about how to search it. Say entering a string and seeing if it exists in the txt file?

Also is 100,000 + words too big, should I divide it into 26 txt files? One for each letter. Its 4MB in size

Looking forward to your help,
Thomas

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smerf

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Posted: 22nd Dec 2019 07:02 Edited at: 22nd Dec 2019 07:05

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+ Code Snippet

findmore=1

wordcheck$$="randomstring"
do
	if getfileexists(path$+Name+".txt")=1
		opentoread(1,path$+Name+".txt")
	endif

	while FileEof(1)=0
		findmatch$=readline(1)
		for foundletter= 1 to findmore
			if left(findmatch,findmore) = left(wordcheck$,findmore)
				inc findmore,1
			endif
		next
	endwhile
loop

something along those liens ought to work i would imagine just typed it up real quick

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Phaelax

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Posted: 22nd Dec 2019 16:38

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I made a similar game once using a dictionary file. But I think I wrote my own binary search routine.

I'd keep it as one file, it should be fine. When you generate the 3 letters, find all the matching words at that time and keep it in memory that way you're not having to search the text file on every user submission.

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Scraggle

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Posted: 22nd Dec 2019 18:47 Edited at: 22nd Dec 2019 18:48

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This post has been marked by the post author as the answer.

Store your dictionary in an array, then sort it. You can then use the very fast .find() method to search your array.

+ Code Snippet

dictionary as string[]
//Populate the dictionary array (probably a file read)

//Now sort the array
dictionary.sort()

//To search it use .find() - like this
found = dictionary.find("word")

//The variable 'found' now points to the position in the array where "word" exists
if found 
	print(dictionary[found])
endif

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Thomas John Gorham

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Posted: 23rd Dec 2019 00:41

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This is brilliant! Thanks

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