Re: Show different text based on random number

[kevbot]

You could put your text into an array, and then use the method shown in How do I pick a random element from an array?. For example,

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @choices = (
    "Choice 1",
    "Choice 2",
    "Choice 3",
    "Choice 4"
);

my $random_choice = $choices[rand @choices];

print "The text is: $random_choice\n";

exit;

[htmanning]

Thanks. I tried this but couldn't get it to work. The text is a rather large block so I put each of them in separate text files. I tried to open each file and assign it to a variable which I then stuff into the array, but it didn't work. I wonder if there is a better way since its such a large amount of text?

[kevbot]

If you have your text in individual files, you could do something like this (with the help of Path::Tiny):

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Path::Tiny;

my @choices = (
    path('c1.txt'),
    path('c2.txt'),
    path('c3.txt'),
    path('c4.txt'),
);

my $random_path = $choices[rand scalar @choices];
my $text = $random_path->slurp;

print "The text is: $text\n";

exit;

[htmanning]

Thanks. Do I have something wrong? This doesn't work:

use Path::Tiny;

my @choices = (
    path('/usr/home/test/public_html/front-one.txt'),
    path('/usr/home/test/public_html/front-two.txt'),
    path('/usr/home/test/public_html/front-three.txt'),
);

my $random_path = $choices[rand scalar @choices];
my $text = $random_path->slurp;

print "$text";