how to check if a string looks randomized, or human generated and pronouncable?

Question

For the purpose of identifying [possible] bot-generated usernames.

Suppose you have a username like \"bilbomoothof\" .. it may be nonsense, but it still contains pro

Answer 1

Off the top of my head, you could look for syllables, making use of soundex. That's the direction I would explore, based on the assumption that a pronounceable word has at least one syllable.

EDIT: Here's a function for counting syllables:

function count_syllables($word) {
 
$subsyl = Array(
'cial'
,'tia'
 ,'cius'
 ,'cious'
 ,'giu'
 ,'ion'
 ,'iou'
 ,'sia$'
 ,'.ely$'
 );
  
 $addsyl = Array(
 'ia'
 ,'riet'
 ,'dien'
 ,'iu'
 ,'io'
 ,'ii'
 ,'[aeiouym]bl$'
 ,'[aeiou]{3}'
 ,'^mc'
 ,'ism$'
 ,'([^aeiouy])\1l$'
 ,'[^l]lien'
 ,'^coa[dglx].'
 ,'[^gq]ua[^auieo]'
 ,'dnt$'
 );
  
 // Based on Greg Fast's Perl module Lingua::EN::Syllables
 $word = preg_replace('/[^a-z]/is', '', strtolower($word));
 $word_parts = preg_split('/[^aeiouy]+/', $word);
 foreach ($word_parts as $key => $value) {
 if ($value <> '') {
 $valid_word_parts[] = $value;
 }
 }
  
 $syllables = 0;
 // Thanks to Joe Kovar for correcting a bug in the following lines
 foreach ($subsyl as $syl) {
 $syllables -= preg_match('~'.$syl.'~', $word);
 }
 foreach ($addsyl as $syl) {
 $syllables += preg_match('~'.$syl.'~', $word);
 }
 if (strlen($word) == 1) {
 $syllables++;
 }
 $syllables += count($valid_word_parts);
 $syllables = ($syllables == 0) ? 1 : $syllables;
 return $syllables;
 }

From this very interesting link:

http://www.addedbytes.com/php/flesch-kincaid-function/