Build an ASCII chart of the most commonly used words in a given text [closed]

Answer 1

Perl, 185 char

200 (slightly broken) 199 197 195 193 187 185 characters. Last two newlines are significant. Complies with the spec.

map$X{+lc}+=!/^(.|the|and|to|i[nst]|o[rf])$/i,/[a-z]+/gfor<>;
$n=$n>($:=$X{$_}/(76-y+++c))?$n:$:for@w=(sort{$X{$b}-$X{$a}}%X)[0..21];
die map{$U='_'x($X{$_}/$n);" $U
"x!$z++,"|$U| $_
"}@w

First line loads counts of valid words into %X.

The second line computes minimum scaling factor so that all output lines will be <= 80 characters.

The third line (contains two newline characters) produces the output.