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176

answers:

2

I have some tests that use guids. The guids used don't need to be enormously unique, they just need to be guids. Random guids are boring - so I'm trying to find fun guid words. Right now, I don't have anything better than "00000000-feed-dada-iced-c0ffee000000". Ideally I'd generate a list of verbs, nouns, prepositions.

Having only spent a few minutes on this problem, here's where I am:

  1. I have a word list (somewhat large) from puzzlers.org.
  2. Apply this regex to identify words that could be used in a Guid (o=0, i=1) ^[ABCDEFOI]{1,8}$
  3. Squint.

Why doesn't someone have a funny guid generator available for my immediate gratification? How would you approach this? Any suggestions on how to improve this special guid generation process are welcome.

+3  A: 

The solution you started is exactly how I would approach it. And it looks like someone already did the work for you:

http://nedbatchelder.com/text/hexwords.html

jdmichal
+2  A: 

This isn't a technical answer but:

The Daily WTF had a post a while back, describing a guy who wrote the exact type of thing that you are trying to create, the reason it was Daily WTF material is because the generator ended up spitting out things that sounded like curse words.

From The Daily WTF - The Automated Curse Generator

Markov chains!" he blurted. "We can use statistical textual analysis to generate random words built up from natural phonemic combinations. They won't be real words, but they will match expected English patterns, and people will be able to pronounce and read them completely naturally."

I bet if you read that post you will get ideas about how to improve upon what you already have working.

instanceofTom
Awesome! Thanks for the laughs :)
jdmichal