Code Golf: Word Search Solver

Answer 1

Perl, 226 char

sub h($){"row ",$%=1+($x=pop)/$W,", column ",1+$x%$W}
@S=map/[^ ]/g,;
B:for(@ARGV){
 for$d(map{$_,-$_}1,$W=@S/$.,$W-1,$W+1){
  A:for$s(0..$#S){
   $t=$s-$d;for(/./g){next A if$S[$t+=$d]ne$_||$t<0}
   print h$s,' --> ',h$t,$/;
   next B
}}}

Character count excludes newlines and indentation, which are included for readability. I assume the matrix of letters is specified with standard input and the target words are command-line arguments.

First line (after the sub h definition) maps all non-space characters into a single array @S. Then iterate over all the target words, over the possible directions that words may appear in ($W is the width of the puzzle), and over all of the letters in the current target word until a match is found.

$ perl wordsearch.pl CODEGOLF RACECAR BYKLHQU < row 5, column 1
row 14, column 3 --> row 14, column 9
row 3, column 12 --> row 9, column 6