Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 September 10

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September 10

Looking for a software for looking up in a plain text dictionary

I have a plain text dictionary with 900,000+ vocabularies. I intend to export the vocabularies matching some RegExps, such as "^A[a-z]+e$", "^[a-z]+ion$" and so on. Thus I am looking for such a software to do this work. My OS is Windows. Please recommend some good softwares to me, thank you in advance. --Capim Dourado (talk) 13:02, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

You haven't said exactly what format your dictionary takes. Is it merely a list of words, one per line? If so, (a port of) grep is the obvious tool. If it is a more complicated format (multiple lines per word to include definitions and such, or XML or what have you), you'll need first to identify what it is. --Tardis (talk) 05:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice. Your guess is correct. I will try grep first. --Capim Dourado (talk) 10:53, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Revisiting the Mac Question

After more research, and a decline of my fanboy attitude after using a friend's new MacBook (the one with the retina display), I've come to a realization; that is entirely too much money to buy a beefed up MacBook that is nearly impossible to service in any way, shape, or form. So, with that being said, I have a new set of questions. Keep in mind I will use this laptop for regular user activities (web browsing, word documents, etc. etc) with an added gaming scene with League of Legends, as well as music and video editing from a go pro and other various mediums.

1) I am now looking at a MacBook Pro (the newest model before the unserviceable upgrade in the retina display models), that has

       - 2.3 GHz, i7 processor
       - 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500 GB HD
       - NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB Graphics

Is this computer capable of smoothly handling what I would need it for?

2) If not, would the third party upgrades be a viable option?

2.1) if yes, what third party upgrades should be made? (I'm guessing RAM) and would anyon care to suggest which brand of third party upgrades?

I feel fairly confident in my ability to do the add-ons myself; I've spent more time with my Toshiba Satellite open than I'd like to admit. My main concern is taking the declined GHz and GB of RAM in order to save big bucks, and be able to upgrade and maintenance the machine compared to the retina display models.

Thanks, again!--Hubydane (talk) 14:35, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that the 2.3 GHz i7 is good enough, but I'd go with the slightly higher model for the better graphics card. I also found the switch from HDD to SDD to be the single best experience booster I ever had with a laptop. Rumors are that a refresh of the whole MacBook Pro line is overdue, so you might want to wait a few days (but that is always true, and I've had good experiences with a very fresh Powerbook G4 (free upgrade between order and delivery) and a slightly riper MacBook Pro (updated 2 month after I bought it) ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:30, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

ill definitely be waiting (at least until the end of the month) before buying, so I will keep an eye out. What graphics update should I be trying to find? My searching has been limited to Amazon...I'm cheap by nature, but I can't seem to find an upgrade without going to the retina display model, which is what I want to avoid. When mentioned upgrading, I was speaking off additional RAM, but now my interest is piqued. How feasible is switching to SSD in a MacBook? Is appealing because it would have the SSD of the newer model, but non of the soldering setbacks.--Hubydane (talk) 17:47, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

You can order the MacBook Pro (no retina) with an SSD, too - I did it nearly 4 years ago. I don't know how easy it is to switch the built-in drive with an SSD. I'm cheap, too, but time is relatively more precious than money at this stage of my life, so I never bothered. The Apple Store is down at the moment (putting in fancy new iPhones, I guess), but I distinctly remember that one of the higher frequency MacBook Pros came with a 1GB graphics card. Changing the graphics card in a notebook is not usually feasible.

Would the SSD be soldered (and thus much more difficult to deal with) like the retina models? I can't seem to find any mention. And is it really -that- much better, to upgrade to the 512 SSD on the Apple website is still $400.--Hubydane (talk) 18:37, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I have the early 2011 15" macbook pro, upgraded its memory to 16GB (much cheaper than ordering 16GB from Apple), moved the existing HDD to the DVD bay, and installed a SDD. Hardware wise it was a trivial job, if you've got a decent screwdriver set. OSX itself worked fine after that, but getting pre-release Windows 8 to run on the second drive in a shared bootcamp/parallels setup on the secondary drive took the better part of a saterday. As far as I can tell, the current non-retina pros are still mostly the same internally. I'd recommend looking up the disassembly/reassembly process for what you want to replace on sites like iFixit, and then decide whether you'd be comfortable doing it yourself. 82.75.247.59 (talk) 20:14, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

No, as far as I know the SSD in a MacBook Pro (unlike the Air and Retina models) is in a standard hard drive enclosure. Getting rid of that is part of how they made the Retina and Air so small. And this seems to suggest that you can upgrade yourself. Yes, the performance with the SSD is significantly better for many applications, and the peace of mind of no moving parts is worth it if you travel with your laptop (the "no noise" part may or may not be worth it if you don't travel, depending on your tolerance level and use of headphones to listen to Judas Priest;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:09, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, this is looking hopeful! I you don't mind explaining though, whats the meaning of SATA 6Gb/s compatible to SATA 3 Gb/s. Hubydane (talk) 19:24, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I can't answer that question directly, but as someone who was skeptical of SSDs, and who recently got one, I was blown away by how light they are (about the weight of a steno pad... they're ridiculously light) and how small they are. As for performance, I can't compare directly, but it seems really fast. There are some longevity concerns, I would certainly backup anything I had on there of importance, but the SSD advantages are pretty stark. I'm not even talking about a laptop. I'm sure the power difference is huge. Shadowjams (talk) 07:41, 11 September 2013 (UTC)