Word Ladder

Find path from one word to another, changing one letter each step, and each intermediate word must be in the dictionary, the dictionary is a text file with words separated by a line break like the one found in /usr/share/dict/words

Prerequisites

• Python 3.4 and Linux
• List of words separated by newlines
• Virtual environment is recommended

Documentation

• http://word-ladder.readthedocs.io

Installing

From PyPi

$ pip install word-ladder

Manually

Clone the repository (Pypi package comming soon)

$ git clone git@github.com:snebel29/word_ladder.git
$ cd word_ladder
$ pip install .

to install development dependencies as well

$ pip install -e .[dev]

Getting started

The word_ladder packges commes with both, a command line tool and a module that can be used to find word ladder paths

Command line tool

Once installed you can use the command line interface

$ word_ladder -h

Python module

You can import and use the module directly as well

>>> from word_ladder import WordLadder
>>> wl = WordLadder('tests/word_lists/linux_english_words')
>>> wl.find_path('fear', 'sail')
['fear', 'hear', 'heir', 'hair', 'hail', 'sail']
>>> wl.find_path('Abe', 'sail')
['Abe', 'be', 'bed', 'bid', 'aid', 'said', 'sail']
>>> wl.find_path('Am', 'sail')
['Am', 'am', 'aim', 'ail', 'sail']

Running the tests

You will have to use nose to run the tests

$ nosetests

Contributing

Clone development branch then create pull requests against it

References

• https://bradfieldcs.com/algos/graphs/word-ladder/