Re: mental hashing for paper address books (with Python)

> ... but alphabetized
> address books on paper are a pain because moving entries up and down
> the page to insert a new entry is, at best, very time-consuming.


At some point I was reading an old book on pre-automation business  
practices, and found that at least some enterprises had developed a  
hashing system exactly in order to prevent contention in front of  
physical cabinets by the filing clerks.  Can't recall what they  
called the technique then, however.

-Dave

PS.  better environment management; unf. render is not quite foldl1:

#!/usr/bin/python
"Telegram problem, aka fmt."

bol     = lambda s     : ('\n'+s).rfind('\n')-1
render  = lambda f,ws  : reduce(f,ws[1:],''.join(ws[:1]))
tgram	= lambda f,max : render(lambda s,w: s+" \n"[len(s+w)-bol(s)>max] 
+w,
			       f.read().split())

if __name__ == '__main__':
     import sys
     print tgram(sys.stdin,72)

-- 
To unsubscribe: http://lists.canonical.org/mailman/listinfo/kragen-discuss