[Purdue-pm] challenge problem for next meeting?

[Mark Senn]

Mark Senn <mark at purdue.edu> wrote on 2015-07-29 at 10:59 -04:
|  Is there interest in this challenge problem for the next meeting?
|  Write back if you'll talk, email, or blog about your solution.
|  Given a list of names, for example
|       Abe
|       Alan
|       Ben
|       Cat
|       Cathy
|  print a list of all names, shortening them as much
|  as possible, with them still remaining unique, like this
|       Ab
|       Abe
|       Al
|       Ala
|       Alan
|       B
|       Be
|       Ben
|       Cat
|       Cath
|       Cathy
|  in Perl 5 and Perl 6.
|
|  Read the names from a Perl data section one name per line.
|  Do error checking to make sure you aren't given duplicate names.
|  Perl 6 has grammars
|       http://doc.perl6.org/language/grammars
|  and sets, bags, and mixes:
|       http://doc.perl6.org/language/setbagmix

Michael Gribskov <gribskov at purdue.edu> wrote on 2015-07-29 at 11:56:39 -04:
|  Do you want the output to be unique, e.g., both Cat and Cathy contain
|  CAT, should it occur only once in output?

Yes, just once.  After the program runs

               (This column is not part of the original problem
               definition,  I only added it to give an example of
               what I mean in the paragraph following this list.)
THESE NAMES    COULD REFER TO THESE PEOPLE
-----------    --------------------------------------------------
Ab Abe         Abe Lincoln
Al Ala Alan    Alan Turing
B Be Ben       Ben Carson
Cat            Cat Stevens
Cath Cathy     Cathy Rigby

Cath is not shortened to Cat because we'd get Cat Stevens
and Cathy Rigby confused.

-mark