Date: Sat, 19 Dec 92 12:41:21 PST
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[email protected]>
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From:
[email protected] (Captain COCOT)
To:
[email protected] (SURFPUNK Technical Journal)
Subject: [surfpunk-0020] WAREZ: Getting the right phone number
Keywords: surfpunk, warez, phone number, perl, chortle
Looks useful. Try it next time you order a Personal 911 service.
Captain Cocot
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Source: Yucks Digest Sat, 19 Dec 92 Volume 2 : Issue 62
Property-Of: Written and placed in the public domain by Howard A. Landman
Language: perl
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Date: Mon, 4 May 92 18:18:40 PDT
From: landman%
[email protected] (Howard Landman)
Subject: Getting the right phone number
To: eniac
On moving into my new house, I had to get 2 new phone numbers. I tend to
prefer numbers that spell something. I followed the procedure outlined
below and, as a result, now have the following numbers:
Main: (408) CHORTLE
Computer: (408) CHIPSYN
I liked chortle because any word of Lewis Carroll's is a word of mine.
ChipSyn is appropriate because I mostly do silicon compilation and
logic synthesis for a living.
How did I manage this? It's not too hard ...
HOW TO GET THE PHONE NUMBER OF YOUR DREAMS (in 8 easy steps)
1. Determine the list of available prefixes. The phone company will
happily provide you with this.
2. Ignore all prefixes which contain 0 or 1. There are no letters which
correspond to them. (However, you may want to consider them in step
5 below.)
3. Edit the "prefixes" program (appended below) to match your set of
prefixes. You may also need to change the path to Perl if your
system has it somewhere else. Make it executable with "chmod +x prefixes".
4. Run "prefixes YOUR_PREFIXES > prefixes.out". For example, if your
available prefixes are 555 and 234 (usually it is a much longer list),
run "prefixes 555 234 > prefixes.out". Order of the prefixes has no
effect, as they get sorted anyway. It is most efficient to do all of
your prefixes in one run, since the dictionary then only needs to be
consulted once.
5. Edit the prefixes.out file. It contains not only all 7-letter words
which match valid prefixes, but also shorter words that might *begin*
a combination of words that match a number. For example, the output
of "prefixes 779" is:
779- pry,spy,SSW
779-24 psych
779-243 psyche
779-2442 psychic
779-246 psycho
"psychic" is the only complete word match, but other combinations may be
suggested, such as "pry-open", "psycho-1", or "spy-hole". For each
partial, either come up with one or more combinations that you like, or
delete it. Also, see if any of the prefixes suggest good non-word
possibilities. For example, "248" might suggest "248-1632". Don't
forget that simple repetition is mnemonic, so that, for example, a
number like "248-8888" would be easy to remember. You now have a list
of phone numbers.
6. In a better world, the phone company would let you submit an arbitrary
list of numbers and give you the first one on the list that is available.
Unfortunately, to save themselves work, they restrict you to a maximum
of ten tries, after which they just assign you a number. Since your list
at this point is likely MUCH longer than ten numbers, you need to prescreen
them first. Begin with all numbers on your list unmarked:
a. Pick the best unmarked number and call it. The best time to do this
is in the middle of the day, when you are unlikely to wake anyone up.
b. If it rings, it's in service. Hang up and mark it as in use. If the
word is REALLY good, you can stay on the line and tell the person who
answers what a great number they have and why. I did that for "chuckle",
which turned out to be someone at a bank. Made her whole day.
c. If you get a "not in service" or "that number has been changed" message,
you've hit paydirt. Mark the number as available.
d. Repeat a,b,c until you have at least two and not more than ten available
numbers.
7. Sort your list of available numbers, most desirable first.
8. Call up the phone company and order your phone service, asking for the
most desirable number. Hear the person express amazement when your first
choice is acceptable! (The main chance of failure is if the number got
assigned since you tried it. In that case, give your next most desirable
number.)
--------------------- Save following as "prefixes" ---------------------
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
#
# This program searches for words which are also phone numbers which
# have one of a set of specified prefixes.
#
# Written and placed in the public domain by Howard A. Landman
#
if (@ARGV) {
@prefixes = @ARGV ;
} else {
# Ignore 241,261 since there are no letter for 1.
@prefixes = (236,243,244,246,247,248,249,296,345,553,554,575,984,985,983) ;
}
$letters[0] = '' ;
$letters[1] = '' ;
$letters[2] = 'abc' ;
$letters[3] = 'def' ;
$letters[4] = 'ghi' ;
$letters[5] = 'jkl' ;
$letters[6] = 'mno' ;
$letters[7] = 'prs' ;
$letters[8] = 'tuv' ;
$letters[9] = 'wxy' ;
# This information is redundant, but it was faster to type it in than
# to code the loop to generate it from @letters.
$number{'a'} = 2 ;
$number{'b'} = 2 ;
$number{'c'} = 2 ;
$number{'d'} = 3 ;
$number{'e'} = 3 ;
$number{'f'} = 3 ;
$number{'g'} = 4 ;
$number{'h'} = 4 ;
$number{'i'} = 4 ;
$number{'j'} = 5 ;
$number{'k'} = 5 ;
$number{'l'} = 5 ;
$number{'m'} = 6 ;
$number{'n'} = 6 ;
$number{'o'} = 6 ;
$number{'p'} = 7 ;
$number{'r'} = 7 ;
$number{'s'} = 7 ;
$number{'t'} = 8 ;
$number{'u'} = 8 ;
$number{'v'} = 8 ;
$number{'w'} = 9 ;
$number{'x'} = 9 ;
$number{'y'} = 9 ;
foreach $p (@prefixes)
{
$is_a_prefix{$p} = 1 ;
}
open(DICT,'/usr/dict/words') ;
while (<DICT>)
{
chop ;
next if (7 < length) ; # word is too long for a phone #.
$Word = $_ ;
# lowercase and convert to digits
($word = $Word) =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/ ;
@c = split(//,$word) ;
@n = grep($_ = $number{$_},@c) ; # using grep as mapcar
next if (scalar(@n) != scalar(@c)) ; # some illegal letter
# check against prefixes
$prefix = join('',@n[0..2]) ;
if ($is_a_prefix{$prefix})
{
# build number (with hyphen)
$number = join('',$prefix,'-',@n[3..6]) ;
# one number may equal more than one word, so append
$word{$number} .= "$Word," ;
}
}
foreach $number (sort keys %word)
{
$Words = $word{$number} ;
chop $Words ; # chop trailing comma
print "$number\t$Words\n" ;
}
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