Quote:
Ed Kolis said:
Large file? How so? Let's see, if we have two prefixes (one for military ships, one for civilian ships), twenty name beginnings, twenty name middles, and twenty name endings, that gives us 2*20*20*20 = 8000 unique ship names!  And each name part will usually only be a few characters (e.g. the name "USS Enterprise" could be formed from the parts "USS ", "Ent", "er", and "prise"). Granted you will get a lot of nonsense names (such as "USS Trollumforce" to use a few synonyms  ) but as long as some lexical rules are applied (at least for the human ship names) you won't get anything really silly (like "USS Zxbnft", which might be a good Xiati or Drushocka ship name were it not for the USS part )
Basically, the principle is to get the most out of your data entry. 8000 ship names at an average of 12 letters each would take up 96 KB of space, which would take a long time to type in; 8000 ship names in the 2x20x20x20 scheme I suggested earlier would only take 186 *bytes* (assuming each name part happens to be 3 letters). And if you add another name part to the list, it adds not just one name, but hundreds!
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This is why I like programs like Everchanging Book of Names, which do all that fun stuff for me.
It is how I made a bunch of Tolkien-themed files, like Quenya, Sindarin, Black Speech, etc.