Word Hunts

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A fast and customizable command-line tool for searching English words by prefix. Built for games like Last Letter, word puzzles, linguistics tools, and general word lookup.

This CLI loads a local dictionary (400k+ words) and performs instant prefix searches using an optimized binary-search algorithm.

✨ Features

• 🚀 Instant prefix search (optimized binary-search, extremely fast)
• 📚 Works fully offline with local dictionary (400k+ words)
• 🎯 Direct search mode or interactive mode
• 🌍 Multilingual support with English and Indonesian UI
• 🎛️ Customizable output
  • Table mode ON/OFF
  • Max result limit
  • Number of columns
  • Cell width (auto or manual)
• 📖 Enhanced help system with clear examples and documentation
• 🔧 Persistent settings via config.json
• 📐 Automatic terminal-width adaptation
• ✂️ Auto-adaptive cell width based on content
• 🎮 Perfect for word-based games or productivity tools

📦 Installation

Via NPM (Recommended)

npm install -g @jimbonlemu/word-hunts

Via GitHub

git clone https://github.com/jimbonlemu/word-hunts
cd word-hunts
npm install
npm link

🚀 Usage

Direct Search Mode

Quick search and exit. Perfect for one-off lookups or scripting.

wh cat
word-hunts hello

Interactive Mode

Start interactive mode with UI. Great for multiple searches and exploring features.

wh
# or
word-hunts

After running, type any prefix:

Example output:

Help & Version & Language

wh --help          # Show help message
wh --version       # Show version
wh --lang en       # Switch language to English and exit
wh --lang id       # Switch language to Indonesian and exit

Language Switching

You can switch between supported languages in interactive mode:

/lang en    # Switch to English
/lang id    # Switch to Indonesian

🖥️ Commands

Direct Mode

| Command | Description | | --- | --- | | wh <prefix> | Search words starting with prefix | | wh --help or wh -h | Show help message | | wh --version or wh -v | Show version | | wh --lang <en,id> | Switch language (en/id) and exit |

Interactive Mode

| Command | Description | | --- | --- | | <prefix> | Search words starting with prefix | | /help, /h | Show this help message | | /tbon, /tboff, /tb | Toggle table mode (on/off) | | /lang, /language | Switch language (en/id) | | /sres | Set result limit | | /scol | Set number of columns | | /scw | Set cell width (auto or manual) | | /frn [on/off], /frnon, /frnoff | Toggle filtering of Roman numerals (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) | | /sml <number> | Set minimum word length from result | | /refs, /ui | Refresh/Show UI header | | /q, /quit, /exit | Quit the program | | /version, /v | Show version |

🧠 How It Works

The CLI performs the following steps:

• Pre-sorts all words (case-insensitive)
• Finds the lower-bound match using binary search
• Collects all sequential matching prefixes
• Renders the output in table mode or plain mode
• Fits columns automatically to terminal width
• Truncates long words for clean alignment

📚 Dictionary Source

This CLI uses the words_dictionary.json file from dwyl/english-words.

The dictionary contains 479k English words, originally sourced from Infochimps and expanded by the dwyl community.

License: Unlicense (Public Domain) All credit for the dictionary data belongs to the original authors.

📜 License

MIT © Mochamad Iqbal Maulana

See LICENSE file for details.

👤 Author

Mochamad Iqbal Maulana

• GitHub: @jimbonlemu
• NPM: @jimbonlemu

Made because I needed it and for fun. Maybe you need it too.

A simple & fast CLI to dominate any word-based challenge.

🙏 Acknowledgements

• dwyl/english-words - For providing the comprehensive English word list
• Infochimps - Original word list source

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome!

Feel free to check the issues page.

⭐ Show Your Support

Give a ⭐️ if this project helped you!