A friend of mine asked me to code a little tool that can take any string of morse code and output all possible translations of it. At first glance this seemed easy enough, but it turns out to be rather tricky and I'm kind of stuck.

To clarify the problem, I will give an example. I use dots (.) and dashes (-) for morse code.

D   O   N  A  T I  O   N
-.. --- -. .- - .. --- -.

Now, to parse this and get the word 'DONATION' is easy, but what if the spaces were left out?

-..----..--..----.

Taking into account that a morse code 'character' can consist of 1 to 7 dots or dashes (letters, digits and punctuation) the problem arises.

What I need is an (recursive) algorithm that can split the string without spaces into all possible groups of substrings, with a maximum length of 7 chars per substring. It will start at some point, for example 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1... and iterate through all possible combinations. In the example given, the first morse code character can be - (T) or -. (N) or -.. (D) or -..- (X).

I realize the number of possibilities will grow very large, but that's not the issue.

EDIT: Please realize that the relative positions of the morse code characters do not change.

So does anybody have an idea? Any ideas are welcome, and sample code is appreciated in any language.

I dislike Comic Sans and specifically its utter abuse so much that my sister-in-law gave a me "Ban Comic Sans" mug for my birthday last year  :Thmbsup:

yes, if the software is of quality, then the users will be able to look beyond the hair-pulling discussions on the definition of freeware and actually look forward to enjoy using the software.. in the case of ASAP utilities, i think this program is of professional quality and has helped me a lot of times.. kudos to the developers.. :)

-lanux128 (April 04, 2007, 11:31 PM)

Indeed! Maybe a mini-review of ASAP will bring it to the attention of more people, because I can't imagine using Excel without it anymore.

P.S. btw, Ruffnekk nice image you have there.. do you take orders for customisation? :)

-lanux128 (April 04, 2007, 11:31 PM)

Do you mean the signature image or my avatar? The avatar is not my own creation, the signature images were made using the online tool at http://ubdesigner.com/ and animated with the online tool at http://ubanimator.com/