Bulk search for domain names using R

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# There are several domain name servers that allow 
# for bulk searching of domain names.
# http://www.godaddy.com/bulk-domain-search.aspx
# http://www.namestation.com/bulk-domain-search
# However, they do not provide any wildcard support 
# and instead expect users to supply their own list.
# Which is not a problem if you are an R coder.
 
# This single command will copy to the clipboard a list 
# of mysite1 mysite2 mysite3....mysite500. You can then 
# paste it directly into the godaddy window.
writeClipboard(paste0("mysite", 1:500))
# Using the built in vector letters will produce:
# mysite-a mysite-b mysite-c....mysite-z
writeClipboard(paste0("mysite-", letters))
# I have also written a bulk search command but 
# I am not sure that it is really any better than 
# the above command since it is really not as powerful.
 
# However, it does demonstrate how one might 
# generate a wildcard search algorithm.
bulk.search <- function(intext) {
  # Add spaces before and after
  intext <- paste0(" ", intext, " ")    
  card <- c("|", "?", "#")              # Declare the wildcards
    # Declare the wildcard values
  cardvalues <- list(c(letters,0:9), letters, 0:9)   
    # A vector for saving wildcard detections
  ncards <- NULL                      
    
  for (i in 1:length(card)) ncards[i] <-            
    nchar(gsub(sprintf("[^%s]", card[i]),"",intext))
  stopifnot(sum(ncards)<2) 
 
  # If a wildcard is selected expand the intext
  if (sum(ncards)==1) {              
    intext <- unlist(strsplit(intext, 
                     card[ncards==1], fixed = TRUE))
    intext <- paste0(intext[1], 
             cardvalues[[(1:3)[ncards==1]]],intext[2])
  }
 
  intext <- gsub(" ", "", intext) # Remove the extra spaces
  writeClipboard(intext)
  cat(paste("Coppied to clipboard:\n",
        paste(intext, "\n", collapse=" ")))
  intext
}
bulk.search("mysite?")
bulk.search("mysite|")
bulk.search("mysite#")
Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

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