Question: is there a dictionary i can download for java? 
i want to have a program that takes a few random letters and sees if they can be rearanged into a real word by checking them against the dictionary

Answer: 
[OpenOffice dictionaries](http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries#English_.28AU.2CCA.2CGB.2CNZ.2CUS.2CZA.29) are easy to parse line-by-line.

You can read it in memory (remember it's a lot of memory):

[`List words = IOUtils.readLines(new FileInputStream("dicfile.txt"))`](http://commons.apache.org/io/api-1.4/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.html#readLines%28java.io.InputStream%29) (from [commons-io](http://commons.apache.org/io/))

Thus you get a `List` of all words. Alternatively you can use the Line Iterator, if you encounter memory prpoblems.
Here's one:

<http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/collections/interfaces/examples/dictionary.txt>

You can use the standard Java file handling to read the word on each line:

<http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/java.io/how-to-read-file-in-java.html>