pattern word

[tsh73]

I found a thing - an idea - that could aid in deciphering substitution ciphers.
I just never seen the before (or forgot it).
It is

Pattern word.
(first letter transliterated as A, next distinct letter as B, and so on)

So now we can take a garbled word... remember "covfefe"?
and check what dictionary word match.
Sometimes there are few.
Source word
             covfefe
Pattern word
             abcdede
Matching words:
1             bernini
-- end of dictionary --


'pattern word
'(first letter transliterated as A, next distinct letter as B, and so on).
'term from letter of Doug McIlroy regarding unixdict.txt etc
'http://wiki.puzzlers.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=solving:wordlists:about:mcilroy

' "unixdict.txt"
'it is LF- delimited. Last word has LF after it too
'it is small enough to search in it with INSTR
' "unixdictWin.txt" same thing converted to Window CR/LF

w$="covfefe"
print "Source word"
print , w$
le=len(w$)
pw$=patternWord$(w$)
print "Pattern word"
print ,pw$

print "Matching words:"
open "unixdictWin.txt" for input as #1
   WHILE NOT(EOF(#1))
       input #1, a$
       if len(a$)<> le then [skip]
       if  pw$<>patternWord$(a$) then [skip]
       i=i+1
       print i, a$
       'if  i>20 then exit while
[skip]
   wend
close #1
print"-- end of dictionary --"

end

function patternWord$(w$)
dim a(asc("z"))    'clears it to 0
lastUsed=asc("a")-1
res$=""
for i = 1 to len(w$)
   c$=mid$(w$,i,1)
   if a(asc(c$))=0 then
       lastUsed=lastUsed+1
       a(asc(c$))=lastUsed
       r$=chr$(lastUsed)
   else
       r$=chr$(a(asc(c$)))
   end if
   res$=res$+r$
next
patternWord$=res$
end function