Most common words – A cP systems solution

Abstract

Finding the most common words in a text file is a famous “programming pearl”, originally posed by Jon Bentley (1984). Several interesting solutions have been proposed by Knuth (an exquisite model of literate programming, 1986), McIlroy (an engineering example of combining a timeless set of tools, 1986), Hanson (an alternate efficient solution, 1987). Here we propose a concise efficient solution based on the fast parallel and associative capabilities of cP systems. We also check their parallel sorting capabilities and propose a dynamic version of the classical pigeonhole algorithm.