Find all words containing characters in UNIX

Question

Given a word W, I want to find all words containing the letters in W from /usr/dict/words. For example, \"bat\" should return \"bat\" and \"tab\" (but not \"table\").

He

Answer 1

This utility might interest you:

an -w "tab" -m 3

...gives bat and tab only.

The original author seems to not be around any more, but you can find information at http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/an.html (even if you don't want to use it itself, the source might be worth a look).