Question

What is the best way to validate a gets input against a very long word list (a list of all the English words available)?

I am currently playing with readlines to manipulate the text, but before there’s any manipulation, I would like to first validate the entry against the list.

Answer 1

The simplest way, but by no means the fastest, is to simply search against the word list each time. If the word list is in an array:

if word_list.index word
    #manipulate word
end

If, however, you had the word list as a separate file (with each word on a separate line), then we’ll use File#foreach to find it:

if File.foreach("word.list") {|x| break x if x.chomp == word}
   #manipulate word
end

Note that foreach does not strip off the trailing newline character(s), so we get rid of them with String#chomp.