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I would like to make a challenge that involves English words. Because we want all challenges to be self-contained, I'd have to stuff the huge file into a code block, and let people copy-paste it to use it. However, because there are so many words in English, the system won't let me put so much text into a post.

I see that this question used an external link, while this question used another one. Should I reuse one of these links?

This answer to a similar question recommends Github, while this answer recommends Pastebin. I have never used either, so I don't understand the advantages of each.

In addition, maybe we can use the same system that lets us insert images into our posts - it doesn't limit the file's size, right?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Does the list have to be the same for everyone? If it's just to, e.g., implement a spell checker, one could just take the word list as input and use whatever dictionary is available. \$\endgroup\$
    – Dennis Mod
    Commented Dec 26, 2016 at 15:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes, the list must be the same. Otherwise, I'd just decimate it by a factor of 100 and post it. \$\endgroup\$
    – anatolyg
    Commented Dec 26, 2016 at 15:25
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    \$\begingroup\$ I've commented on the answer you linked to, but I'll repeat it here: Don't use Pastebin. You'll end up with a file with Windows-style newlines which will create all sorts of problems on other platforms. \$\endgroup\$
    – Dennis Mod
    Commented Dec 26, 2016 at 15:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ Have you tried compressing? I think there is a stack-snipped flying around here that can do that. Thats the most self-contained solution that you can get I think. \$\endgroup\$
    – Denker
    Commented Dec 27, 2016 at 22:01

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Use Github's Gists for hosting text files

If you want to associate an external text file to your challenge, I'd recommend Github's Gists as a good way to do it. Github is a site devoted to hosting the code and data of anyone who wants it hosted. I host Pyth on Github, for instance. It's got a huge userbase, it's been around for a long time, and it's survived a denial of service attack from the Chinese government (probably) with no downtime. Your links won't go dead, your posts won't get mangled, it'll be great.

Github also has change tracking, to alleviate confusion if you need to make a change, which is a helpful feature.

To make a Gist, go to https://gist.github.com/ and paste your text into the box. Here's an example I made that has a dictionary as its contents.

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