Spell Check ...

[matthew_heusser at mcgraw-hill.com]

This weekend, I was thinking that XP, Peopleware,
SMNP, and wireless networking are cool, but they
aren't really ... perl.

  So, my proposal is that interspersed with various CS-
appealing topics, we drill down deep into perl and cover
some things that many folks are 'scared' of.

  Regular Expressions.  Hash Tables of Arrays of Hash
tables (and thier uses).  Packages.

  Which got me to think: Making a spell checking package
would be pretty darn easy(*).  In fact, I could do it for around
$500, (assuming we find a sponsor ... isn't there some design
firm that wants this functionality somewhere in GR? :-)
and get GR.PM to Code Review it an QA it.  I would donate
80% of the proceeds to GR.PM, and we could use the money
to pay our speakers, or subsidise lunch, or have door prizes, etc.
(I'm guessing this would make attendence and presentations
shoot up.)  This could make an interesting open-source project ...

Then again, If someone asked nicely, I'd probably do this for free.
(Or use it as an independent study in Grad School or something ...)

Comments?

regards,

Matt H.
(*) - Literally, you'd pass in a string, I'd call a function
to remove punctuation (which also turns "can't" into "can not", etc.),
then I'd call split() ... then read the dictionary into a hash
table, do a foreach loop, and return an array ...

The biggest challenges are getting an ASCII english dictionary
and performance ... I think if we embed the dictionary into the
perl script and pre-compile it (then put it onto a caching server)
we're okay ... hmm ..