# Today's what-if on XKCD **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 10, 2013, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-what-if-on-xkcd/675996 "2013-12-10T18:08:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dogbutler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dogbutler/32/428_2.png) [@dogbutler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogbutler)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-what-if-on-xkcd/675996/21 "2013-12-12T04:22:10Z")
> [@obfusciatrist](#): > > I actually just measured and on all three of my non-ergonomic keyboards the B is perfectly (or as perfectly as can be measured by my crude device) centered under the G and H keys. Yes. It’s a left hand letter. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-what-if-on-xkcd/675996/22 "2013-12-13T01:40:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > He probably intended to make the strings the same length, but didn’t notice the missing 9, and it coincidentally got through his sanity-testing because of the string-extending rule. This would be my guess as well. It was a mistake (either in the original code, or in typing up the web page). By the way, if anyone is interested, it’s a pretty clever trick. Basically, the perl script took the list of words, and applied a rule that puts each one on a line twice - once in lower case, and once in upper case. So ```auto abc adg ``` becomes ```auto abc ABC adg ADG ``` The tr section replaces the capital letters with the corresponding number. We then have ```auto abc 111 adg 123 ``` The grep looks for all words that have six letters the same in a row. The dot matches any character. The \1 refers to the string that was in the parens. The parens themselves are ignored. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-what-if-on-xkcd/675996.md?page=1)