That Stupidly Huge List of Cat Names
So yeah, I found this massive list online. Fifteen thousand warrior cat names. Seriously. Fifteen. Thousand. Somebody actually typed all that out, I guess. Thought, “Hey, this could be cool for my little project, picking some unique fantasy cat names.” Loaded it up. Saw the file size. Nearly cried. Baby laptop ain’t built for this.
First, just tried opening it like any normal text file. Double-clicked. My trusty Notepad… choked. Completely froze. Spinning wheel of doom. Nothing. Just gone. Killed it off eventually. Sigh. Okay, lesson one: Regular tools die with giant files. My text editor just noped out.
Swung by the command line. That black terminal window always feels a bit more serious. Typed a simple `type` command for the file. Uh oh. Gibberish city. Looked like aliens wrote it. Turns out it was encoded weird – probably something old like ANSI or CP1252 from who knows where. My console wanted UTF-8, obviously. Big fat mess. Needed to fix the encoding first.
Finding Tools That Don’t Give Up
Tried Notepad++ next. Handles bigger files better, they say. Loaded… eventually. Success! But still, scrolling through 15000 lines? Forget it. Painfully slow. Clicking anywhere caused lag spikes. Felt like walking through molasses. Needed something smarter than just looking.
Got the brainwave: use a script. Why scroll? Make the computer find the good stuff for me. Dusted off Python. Simple task: read the file, maybe search for specific starting letters or something?
Wrote a basic Python thing. Code was simple. `open()` the file, `readlines()` to grab all lines. Run it. Boom. Python basically screamed “Out of Memory!” My script couldn’t hold all 15000 names at once? Are you kidding me? Memory problems already? Annoying. Like going to battle and your sword breaks in two.
Turns out, reading the whole thing was too greedy, even for modern times sometimes. Needed a different plan. Started “chunking” it. Instead of reading everything at once, read it in pieces. Like eating pizza slice by slice, not shoving the whole pie in your face. Python has tools for that. Rewrote my code to use `readline()` and loop through each name one by one. Kept a counter. This way, it just sips the data, doesn’t try to gulp. Memory usage stayed low and happy.
Finally Picking Some Winners
Okay, so the script runs now without dying. Basic version: count the lines (yep, 15000!), list the first few names. Success!
Now for fun. Wanted names starting with “Night.” Added a tiny `if` condition. Basically: “if the name starts with ‘Night’, print it out.” Ran the script again.
- Nightstar
- Nightfrost
- Nightsong
- Nightbird
- Nightfern
Scrolled up my terminal. Boom. There they were. Felt pretty smart. Did another quick test for “Moth” prefix. Worked too. Perfect.
Modified the script right away to let me type in the start bit later. Made it reusable. Could search for any starting pattern easily. Much better than trying to Ctrl+F through 15000 lines!
Ended up grabbing about 20 awesome “Night” names for my project. Got the job done. Started with frustration, ended feeling like I actually tamed the beast. Key takeaway? Big files need smarter tools and patience. Don’t let giant lists scare you off!
