Re: New to Perl: Hashes and int(rand())

[AnomalousMonk]

The next steps are to abstract the process of rolling a 6-sided die, and then to abstract the process of creating an n-sided die to roll. The latter step is a bit advanced, but just be aware it's possible. Also be aware that the built-in rand function may not be all that random.

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"printf qq{%d }, die6() for 1 .. 10;
 print '';
 ;;
 sub die6 { return 1 + int rand 6; }
 ;;
 ;;
 sub make_die {
   my ($sides) = @_;
   ;;
   return sub { return 1 + int rand $sides; };
   }
 ;;
 my $die_20 = make_die(20);
 my $die_5  = make_die(5);
 ;;
 printf qq{20: %d;  5: %d \n}, $die_20->(), $die_5->() for 1 .. 6;
"
1 5 4 4 6 5 4 1 1 1
20: 9;  5: 2
20: 13;  5: 1
20: 6;  5: 1
20: 9;  5: 3
20: 9;  5: 1
20: 5;  5: 1

[Laurent_R]

I also thought about making it in a sub, and it is certainly a good idea, but I figured out that the OP just completed chapter 5 of Ovid's book and subroutines are explained only in chapter 7.

[AnomalousMonk]

I'm not sure I'd wait so long to introduce such a basic concept, but I haven't looked at Ovid's book and so I'm not familiar with its basic structure. Also, there's the little problem that I've never written a book of any kind...