Macaroni and Cheese

[Ovid]

One of the exercises that you often receive in beginning programming classes is to write a recipe in such detail that a computer would understand, if it could understand your native language. Of course, this isn't possible, so I decided to make the task a bit easier for the computer.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Carp;
use vars qw($pleasure $I $lunch);

my %ingredient = (
    butter                => '1/4 cups',
    milk                  => '1/4 cups',
    macaroni              => '1 1/2 cups',
    water                 => '6 cups',
    salt                  => '1 pinch',
    cheese_like_substance => '1 pouch' );

open BOOK, "<" , "Cryptonomicon" or carp "Where's my friggin' book?! $
+!\n";

my @pot = ($ingredient{'water'}, $ingredient{'salt'});

for my $water_temperature (75..212) {
    read BOOK, $pleasure, 2048 or die "What else has Neal Stephenson w
+ritten?";
}

push @pot, $ingredient{'macaroni'};

STIR_MACARONI: {
    for my $minutes (7..10) {
        read BOOK, $pleasure, 2048 or die "I need another book!";
        last STIR_MACARONI if ($ingredient{'macaroni'} eq 'glue');
    }
}

splice @pot, $#pot/2, 0, $ingredient{'butter'};
my $pot = join '', @pot;
$pot .= $ingredient{'milk'};

STIR_MACARONI_AGAIN: {
    my @lunch = split //, $pot;
    for (0..10) {
        splice @lunch, rand($#lunch), 0, $ingredient{'cheese_like_subs
+tance'};
    }
    $lunch = join '', @lunch;
}

if ($I eq eat($lunch)) {
    read BOOK, $pleasure, 2048 
        or carp "I hate mac and cheese.  It's just something to do whi
+le reading.";
}

sub eat {
    my $food = shift;
    if (BOOK) {
        for (0..length($food)) {
            $food = substr $food, 0, (length($food) - 1);
        }
    } else {
        print "$food must be good if you ain't reading!\n";
    }
}