findwords <- function(tf) {
   # read in the words from the file, into a vector of mode character
   txt <- scan(tf,"")
   words <- split(1:length(txt),txt)
   return(words)
}

## MM's  "style":
findwords <- function(tf) {
   # read in the words from the file, into a vector of mode character
   txt <- scan(tf, what="")
   ##  1:length(.) is nice to read but "dangerous" for programming
   split(seq_along(txt), txt)
}