# 
# On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 07:47:45AM -0400, Marco Baringer wrote:
# >When I was in elementary school I wasted many an hour playing hangman
# >with my friends. 
# 
# My solution is attached; I wrote the game server first, then a word
# guesser following list discussion.
# 
# The game server is fairly simple; it uses a slightly different data
# representation from the others I've seen so far, in that it tracks
# individual letters and only coincidentally maps them into the word.
# 
# The guesser depends on having the dictionary available, and uses the
# letter-frequency technique discussed; since a correct guess costs
# nothing, it always picks the most common letter in the possible words.
# 
# Roger
# 
#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $dict=shift @ARGV;
unless ($dict &&
        -e $dict &&
        -r $dict) {
  die "Can't open dictionary file.\n"
}

my $guesses=shift @ARGV || 11;

my $word;
{
  my $n=0;
  open DICT,"<$dict";
  while (<DICT>) {
    $n++;
    if (rand($n)<1) {
      chomp;
      my $w=lc($_);
      if ($w !~ /[^- 'a-z]/) {
        $word=$w;
      }
    }
  }
  close DICT;
}

my %mask;
my @letters=split '',$word;
map {$mask{$_} = $_} @letters;
map {$mask{$_} = '_'} ('a'..'z');
my $remaining=$guesses;
my $show='_' x length($word);

while (1) {
  print "$show\n";
  chomp (my $guess=<>);
  $guess=lc(substr($guess,0,1));
  if (exists $mask{$guess}) {
    if ($mask{$guess} eq '_') {
      $mask{$guess}=$guess;
      $show=join('',@mask{@letters});
      if ($show !~ /_/) {
        print "LIFE!\n";
        last;
      }
      if ($show !~ /$guess/) {
        $remaining--;
        if ($remaining<=0) {
          print "DEATH!\n";
          last;
        }
      }
    } else {
      print "You've already tried that letter.\n";
    }
  } else {
    print "You may only guess letters.\n";
  }
}