Inspired by the OP, I wrote the following. It's a system for simple console-based menus. It's easily extensible.
use strict;
use warnings;
sub do_menu
{
my( $menu ) = @_;
while(1)
{
my( $menu ) = @_;
# display the menu
print "\n";
print $_+1, '. ', $menu->[$_]{'label'}, "\n"
for 0 .. $#{$menu};
print '0. ', ( @_ > 1 ? 'Return' : 'Exit' ), "\n";
# get the user's input
local @ARGV;
print STDERR '> ';
local $_ = <>; chomp;
/\d/ && !/\D/ or next;
$_ == 0 and last; # item 0 is special
defined $menu->[$_-1] or warn("Invalid choice\n"), next;
my $op = $menu->[$_-1]{'op'};
my $arg = $menu->[$_-1]{'arg'};
if ( $op eq 'submenu' )
{
do_menu( $arg, @_ ); # maintain the stack!
}
elsif ( $op eq 'exec_cmd' )
{
execute_command( $arg );
}
else
{
warn "Unrecognized op '$op'\n";
}
}
}
my @printers_menu = (
{
label => 'Show all Printers',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'showprintersall',
},
{
label => 'Show user print jobs',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'showprintersuser',
},
{
label => 'Show single printer',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'showprinter',
},
{
label => 'Kill a print job',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'killprint',
},
);
my @accounts_menu = (
{
label => 'Unlock user account',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'unlockuser',
},
{
label => 'Change account password',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'changepass',
},
);
my @main_menu = (
{
label => 'List and Kill UDT* processes by user',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'ListKillProc',
},
{
label => 'List and Kill Print Jobs...',
op => 'submenu',
arg => \@printers_menu,
},
{
label => 'Manage user accounts...',
op => 'submenu',
arg => \@accounts_menu,
},
{
label => 'Run App',
op => 'exec_cmd',
arg => 'APP',
},
);
sub execute_command
{
warn "Executing command '@_'\n";
}
do_menu( \@main_menu );
Of course, with objects, this might have been even more elegant.
We're building the house of the future together.