EATSHOW - Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus Viewer

A command-line utility for exploring word associations in the Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus (EAT). Originally developed at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 1988, with enhancements added in 2005.

Overview

EATSHOW allows you to search for words in the Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus and view their associated words along with frequency statistics. The program operates in two modes:

• Stimulus Mode: Shows responses given when the query word was used as a stimulus
• Response Mode: Shows stimuli that elicited the query word as a response

Requirements

• C compiler (gcc, cl, icl, or compatible)
• Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus data files:
  • sr_concise - Stimulus-Response data
  • rs_concise - Response-Stimulus data
  • sr_index - Stimulus-Response index
  • rs_index - Response-Stimulus index

Compilation

# GCC
gcc -Wall eatshow.c -o eatshow

# Microsoft Visual C++
cl eatshow.c

# Intel C Compiler
icl -Wall eatshow.c

Usage

Interactive Mode

Run without arguments to enter interactive mode:

./eatshow

You'll be prompted to enter words. Press Enter (without typing a word) to exit.

Command Line Mode

Pass words directly as arguments:

./eatshow word1 word2 word3

Command Line Options

• -a - Display additional information about the application
• -d - Turn off results demarcation (no separating lines)
• -f<file> - Echo output to a file (appends if file exists)
• -i<file> - Read and process input from a file (one word per line)
• -l<n> - Limit output to first n results
• -n - Number the output results
• -r - Use Response mode (find stimuli for the given response)
• -s - Use Stimulus mode (default - find responses for the given stimulus)
• -sw - Toggle between Stimulus and Response modes (runtime switch)
• -t - Use tab-delimited output instead of spaces
• -x - Dump the complete index wordlist for the current mode
• -? - Display usage information

Examples

Basic word lookup:

./eatshow man

Number the results:

./eatshow -n woman

Switch modes during execution:

./eatshow man -sw man

First shows responses when "man" was a stimulus, then shows stimuli where "man" was a response.

Tab-delimited output to file:

./eatshow -t -foutput.txt -n dog cat

Response mode with tab output:

./eatshow -r -t happy

Process words from a file:

./eatshow -i wordlist.txt

Output Format

For each word found, the program displays:

1. Associated Words: Words that are linked to the query word
2. Frequency Count: Number of times each association occurred
3. Proportion: Frequency as a proportion of total responses
4. Summary Statistics:
   • Total number of different responses
   • Total count of all responses

Data Files

The program expects the following data files in the current directory:

• ./sr_concise - Contains 8,211 stimulus-response pairs
• ./rs_concise - Contains 22,776 response-stimulus pairs
• ./sr_index - Index for stimulus-response lookups
• ./rs_index - Index for response-stimulus lookups

Note: File paths can be modified by changing the constants at the top of the source code.

Features

• Dual Mode Operation: Search by stimulus or response
• Flexible Output: Tab or space-delimited formatting
• File I/O: Read word lists from files, echo results to files
• Result Limiting: Control number of results displayed
• Runtime Mode Switching: Toggle between modes without restarting
• Error Handling: Gracefully handles missing words and file access errors

History

• June 1988: Original version by M.D. Wilson, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
• June 2005: Enhanced by peetm (peet.morris@comlab.ox.ac.uk)
  • Added command-line word processing
  • Added multiple switches for output control
  • Added file input/output capabilities

Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus

The Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus is a database of word associations collected from human subjects. It's widely used in psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and natural language processing research.

For more information, visit: http://www.eat.rl.ac.uk/

License

Original code from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Modified version free to use and distribute.

Notes

• Words are automatically converted to uppercase for searching
• The program creates an es.log file on first run in the current directory
• Inaccessible or missing data files will cause the program to exit with an error message