Anagram Fetcher (WARNING: obsolete code)

anagram.py

#
# Anagram Fetcher
#
# NOTE: This is an old, historical script, just posted from my archives for fun. Was 
# written to a quite old version of Python. Worked at least up to Python 2.3.4, 
# but no longer works in newer versons such as 2.6 and beyond!  It silently fails
# in 2.6 and 2.7 and crashes and burns with syntax errors in 3.1
#
# This utility generates a list of anagrams out of a word dictionary. The word
# dictionary is simply a text file containing a list of words with new lines in 
# between each one.
#
# Use it as follows:
#		python anagram.py dict.txt
#
# Mark Nenadov - do whatever you want with it

import sys, string

# returns a signature that will be the same
# for a whole class of anagrams
def getAnagramSignature( item ):
	item_chars = []
	for i in range(len(item)):
		item_chars.append(item[i])
	item_chars.sort()
	return string.join(item_chars, "")

def stripNewLines( list ):
	for i in range(len(list)):
		list[i] = list[i][:-1]
	return list

# sort a list by a given field
def sortBy(list, n):
	nlist = map(lambda x, n=n: (x[n], x), list)
	nlist.sort()
	return map(lambda (key, x): x, nlist)  
 

# main loop

if ( len(sys.argv) != 2 ):
	print "You must pass one input file to this program. That file"
	print "should contain lowercase words seperated by new lines."
	print "Example: python anagram.py dict.txt"
	sys.exit()
 
inFile = ""
try: 
	inFile = open(sys.argv[1], "r" )
except IOError:
	print "Error opening input file"
	sys.exit()

dict = stripNewLines(inFile.readlines())
newDict = []

for item in dict:
	newDict.append([item, getAnagramSignature(item)]) 

newDict = sortBy(newDict, 1)

finalDict = {}

for item in newDict:
	if not (finalDict.has_key(item[1])):
		finalDict[item[1]] = [] 
	finalDict[item[1]].append(item[0])

print "Anagrams Found:"

for group in finalDict.values():
	if ( len(group) > 1 ):
        	print group