Question

I’m trying to is generate all possible syllable combinations for a given word. The process for identifying what’s a syllable isn’t relevant here, but it’s the generating of all combinations that’s giving me a problem. I think this is probably possible to do recursively in a few lines I think (though any other way is fine), but I’m having trouble getting it working. Can anyone help ?

    // how to test a syllable, just for the purpose of this example
    bool IsSyllable(string possibleSyllable) 
    {
        return Regex.IsMatch(possibleSyllable, "^(mis|und|un|der|er|stand)$");
    }

    List<string> BreakIntoSyllables(string word)
    {
       // the code here is what I'm trying to write 
       // if 'word' is "misunderstand" , I'd like this to return
       //  => {"mis","und","er","stand"},{ "mis","un","der","stand"}
       // and for any other combinations to be not included
    }

Answer 1

Try starting with this:

var word = "misunderstand";

Func<string, bool> isSyllable =
    t => Regex.IsMatch(t, "^(mis|und|un|der|er|stand)$");

var query =
    from i in Enumerable.Range(0, word.Length)
    from l in Enumerable.Range(1, word.Length - i)
    let part = word.Substring(i, l)
    where isSyllable(part)
    select part;

This returns:

Does that help to begin with at least?

---

EDIT: I thought a bit further about this problem an came up with this couple of queries:

Func<string, IEnumerable<string[]>> splitter = null;
splitter =
    t =>
        from n in Enumerable.Range(1, t.Length - 1)
        let s = t.Substring(0, n)
        let e = t.Substring(n)
        from g in (new [] { new [] { e } }).Concat(splitter(e))
        select (new [] { s }).Concat(g).ToArray();

var query =
    from split in (new [] { new [] { word } }).Concat(splitter(word))
    where split.All(part => isSyllable(part))
    select split;

Now query return this:

Let me know if that’s nailed it now.