Calculates word frequencies from the text of Jonathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal from http://tomayko.com/writings/awkward-ruby

word_frequency_in_swifts_modest_proposal.sh

# with AWK
curl -s http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080.txt |
awk '
    BEGIN { FS="[^a-zA-Z]+" }

    {
        for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {
            word = tolower($i)
            words[word]++
        }
    }

    END {
        for (w in words)
             printf("%3d %s\n", words[w], w)
    }
' |
sort -rn

# OR with ruby
curl -s http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080.txt |
ruby -ne '
  BEGIN { $words = Hash.new(0) }

  $_.split(/[^a-zA-Z]+/).each { |word| $words[word.downcase] += 1 }

  END {
    $words.each { |word, i| printf "%3d %s\n", i, word }
  }
' |
sort -rn