#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Inline 'C';

explain($_) for qw( foo bar bat baz qux );

__DATA__
__C__

/* don't need to include std C headers... perl.h header (included by 
   default with Inline) includes them */
 
/* define this first so explain() can see it */
char *inflect(int num)
{
    return  num == 1 ? "st" :
            num == 2 ? "nd" :
            num == 3 ? "rd" : 
                       "th";
}                                          
     
void explain(char *var)
{
    static int i = 1;
    printf("%s is the %d%s meta-syntactic variable.\n", 
        var, i, inflect(i) );
    ++i;
}