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Google hpph;r.

Returns search results and offers "Did you mean?'s" even if the whole word or phrase is a typo.
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Sometimes I accidentally begin typing with my fingers in unusual starting positions. I.e. if my left pinky is on the 's' and my right pinky on the ", then the word 'google' will look like 'hpph;r'. If my left pinky was on the 'q' and my right on the 'p', then the word 'google' will look like 't99to3'. If I make this mistake when I'm googling something, then I get no or poor results. Because the errors are deterministic, there should be a simple way to treat this like a spelling error for search purposes. So this idea is for an algorithm and its implentation to recognize and respond to these typos.
miggavin, Sep 05 2015

hpph;r/vp, http://www.urbandic...rm=hpph%3Br%2Fvp%2C
[tatterdemalion, Sep 05 2015]

Do you mean .... _22_20Do_20you_20me...HIS_20Marc_3f_20_22
[normzone, May 01 2017]

[link]






       /there was never a point that anyone got taught to type/   

       The opposite is true now; tiny kids are typing as they learn their letters, and basically just hashing something out that works. If there is any formal typing instruction involved I have not heard about it yet.
bungston, Sep 05 2015
  

       I love this idea. I often have the exact same problem. Which means we have been googling nonsense together. Yay.
blissmiss, Sep 06 2015
  

       Incidentally, this is also a very weak cipher.
Cuit_au_Four, Sep 06 2015
  

       OK, so the challenge is to find a word of more than three letters which, when typed in an offset position on a regular keyboard, still produces a legitimate word.   

       So far the best I can do is "gets" and "fwra", where "fwra" is the past participle of the Icelandic for "run".   

       Longest word wins three free breakfasts paid for by [8th].
MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 06 2015
  

       Whoa. I've just discovered that Welsh is English offset by one key to the left.
MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 06 2015
  

       Like [Ian T], I was never taught to type at school because no one had personal computers then. So, my typing has evolved over the years so that I now type at a reasonable speed using two fingers on each hand and one thumb, while looking at the keyboard. This means that it's now impossible for me to learn to type 'properly' as any first steps along this path would be a massive backwards step in terms of typing speed. What I'd like, I suppose, is a typing method which evolves my current typing style into something a bit better.
hippo, Sep 07 2015
  

       wordlength=2

if not open (dictionary)
{
open dictionary
}

while wordlength<10
{
getword (ptr thisword, wordlength)

lookformatch (ptr thisword, wordlength)
}


getword(length)
{

while not (word is right length)
{
check current word length
increment pointer to location of next word
}
return ptr
}

lookformatch (thisword, wordlength)
{
nummatches=0

new array (wordImMatching [wordlength, nummatches])
wordImMatching [1,0]=

Okay I'm out of my depth atthis point. We need to recursively search for matching words but I don't know how to do that efficiently. The best I could do is search the entire dictionary for each character matching the first in the word I'm looking for, then reduce the search space for each word not found. I can't recurse.
Voice, Sep 07 2015
  

       [bigsleep] That's a bit old-school - the pangram to use now is "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz". Also the pangram you cite doesn't need the word 'back' at the end.
hippo, Sep 07 2015
  

       //We need to recursively search for matching words//   

       Why recursively? Given a 10,000 word dictionary and all possible offsets (given that you have to remain in the "letter" zone of the keyboard), you could do a brute force analysis:
for each word
for each horizontal offset
for each vertical offset
compute new word
is it in the dictionary?
next
next
next
MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 07 2015
  

       Spot the VBA programmer. ;)
pertinax, Sep 07 2015
  

       [bigsleep] Keyboards have a useful physical property of touch. Distinguishing the f and j keys, in order to position and order your writing using touch isn't necessarily the consideration here. Its more about mistouch, which probably isnt a real word. Mistouch, I mean, isn't 'real' not 'hpph;r', which is a very real 'accidental' word brought about by mistouching the keys.
miggavin, Sep 07 2015
  

       hpph;t   

       Are you sure you didn't mean hpph;r ?
FlyingToaster, Sep 07 2015
  

       [Flyingtoaster] Exactutuckly, Are you sure...? Slang, typo, etc. Fundamentally keyboards are physical representations of alphabets, pressed upon to make words and sentences. Consequently, any specific organization and common style/s of usage, of said keyboard, become/s, by/in itself, the object of creative affectation, such as hpph;r. This ofc is not a big problem, but wtf, why not consider it. Consider it, I mean, for practical everyday search purposes. By instance, if any mispelling/mistouch can be attributed/misattributed with statistical certainty to key location, itself, and/or finger positioning, then extrapolate and blah blah blah.
miggavin, Sep 07 2015
  

       //Interestingly, there was never a point that anyone got taught to type at school.   

       I was the only guy in year 9 typing class. It was... interesting.
AusCan531, Sep 08 2015
  

       I occasionally produce work with one hand offset, but not the other, which is an additional permutation.   

       google = gppg;e.   

       This is at least partially due to a non-standard typing approach. I was taught home row, but my actual positioning has my right hand further over, and the left and right both moving to hit the central keys as needed.   

       (and this was really hard to type, because I was thinking about how I was typing it).
MechE, Sep 08 2015
  

       Odd. I had typing back in 1989. We had IBM electric typewriters in class then. I much prefer to type than write anything.   

       This could get interesting for multiple languages / multi- lingual keyboard formats.
RayfordSteele, Sep 08 2015
  
      
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