(Golf) Mad-Lib Generator

A recent posting by MrCromeDome showed a quick CUFP-type script to generate random silliness, presumably to badger cow-orkers. Being in a refactoring mood, I thought that it might be better if you could describe your "remark" in a text file. This would be used as a template for generating messages, not unlike your typical "mad-lib". Since it's just a text file, it can be edited by mere mortals without fear of compilation errors.

In this file, there would be two kinds of replacements: Automatic, where a word is picked from a list of possibilities, and prompted, where the user has to answer a question. Here's an example which incorporates both types using a very basic tagging system:

When I was walking down the [street|boulevard|avenue] a large
[squirrel|frog|lemur|llama] [leaped|jumped|ran|crawled] out and
[bit|mauled|chewed|spit at] me!
You'd never believe what [Name?] said!
[download]

When this is run, you'd see something that looks like this, plus or minus input and random factors:

% perl madlib sample.madlib
Name? George Jetson
When I was walking down the avenue a large llama jumped out
and bit me!
You'd never believe what George Jetson said!
[download]

If you're probably thinking this is a couple of simple regexes, you're not entirely wrong. However, to spice things up, there's a few "rules" about how the program runs:

It reads in any template(s) provided on the command line (i.e. @ARGV). All files specified must exist. No error handling required.
Prompt the user for their input before sending any output. Note that there should be a space after the question mark, even though it's not explicitly in the file.
Prompts are sent to STDERR, output to STDOUT. This way you get a clean copy of the output with no prompts when you redirect.
No need for strict or -w compliance. Hack mode is on.

As food for thought, here's my first take at 159 characters, not including linebreaks to suppress the red plus marks:

select STDERR;$|++;select STDOUT;$_=join('',<>);
s#\[([^\]]*\?)\]#print STDERR"$1 ";chomp($i=<STDIN>);$i#ge;
s#\[([^\]]*)\]#@f=split(/\|/,$1);$f[rand@f]#ge;print
[download]

Comment on (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator Select or Download Code

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Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by abstracts (Hermit) on Jul 17, 2002 at 03:59 UTC
Here is my trial at 112. Basically, I joined the 2 substitutions in one, removed unneeded parens, used chop instead of chomp. The regex looks pretty confusing though. Remeber, `STDERR` is unbuffered, so no need to $\|++ it. `$_=join'',<>;s#\[([^\]]?(\?)?)\]#$2?do{print STDERR"$1 "; $_=<>;chop;$_}:do{@f=split/\\|/,$1;$f[rand@f]}#ge;print` [download] Update:* removed STDIN.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by japhy (Canon) on Jul 17, 2002 at 16:21 UTC
Here's mine. 103 chars. `$_=join'',<>;s!\[(.?)(\??)]!$2?print(STDERR"$1? ") &&(<>=~/./g)[0]:split('\\|',$1)&&$_[rand@_]!eg;print` [download] _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area) `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by Util (Priest) on Jul 17, 2002 at 16:07 UTC
100 characters: `print map{ if(s/\?$/? /){print STDERR;$_=<STDIN>;chop} @z=split/\\|/;$z[rand@z] }map{split/\[(.+?)\]/}<>` [download] Explanation: Using `split`, transform all the lines of input into a list of "chunks"; each chunk is plain text, or bracketed text with the brackets removed. For each chunk: If it ends in '?', then append a space to it, print it to STDERR, and replace it with the chomped/chopped input. Split it on '\|' into an array, and select a random element from the array. If there is no '\|' in the chunk, then the array contains the entire chunk in one element, and that element will always be "randomly" chosen. Since the random selection occurs last in the `map`, its value is passed on to `print` for each chunk. Notes: I beat my head against 101, until I s/chomp/chop/. Nothing was said about newline normalization, so I could remove the `chop`. In real golf, there would probably be a test case with '\|' and trailing-'?' in non-bracketed text, which my program would fail to handle correctly. Update: Forced "read all ARGV and close" with "`@_=<>`". This allowed me to change "`<STDIN>`" to "`<>`". 98 characters: `print map{if(s/\?$/? /){print STDERR;$_=<>;chop}@z=split/\\|/;$z[rand@z +]}map{split/\[(.+?)\]/}@_=<>` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by vladb (Vicar) on Jul 17, 2002 at 04:14 UTC
157 characters... ;-) `select I=STDERR;$\|++;select STDOUT;$_=join('',<DATA>); s#\[([^\]]\?)\]#print I"$1 ";chomp($i=<DATA>);$i#ge; s#\[([^\]])\]#@f=split(/\\|/,$1);$f[rand@f]#ge;print` [download] Update: admittadly, I suck at golf ;/ Yet, just now I've learnt an important lesson. The only reason I failed to produce significantly shorter/improved golf code is because I simply failed to think 'outside of the box'. For a couple minutes I simply kept staring at the initial golf piece, in the back of my mind being afraid to temper with it too much as not to break it. Had I only taking the logic of the code aside and tried to come up with an alternative code of mine, I could have a better chance at gaining significant improvement. {grin} Update 1: Looking at Util's and japhy's golf code and sort of combining the good parts of both, I get this piece 97 characters long: `print map{s/\?$/? /?print(STDERR)&&(<>=~/./g)[0]:split('\\|')&&$_[rand +@_]} map{split/\[(.+?)\]/}<>` [download] Update 2:* japhy, the golf works fine for me, here's the complete code and source file: `#!/usr/local/bin/perl print map{s/\?$/? /?print(STDERR)&&(<>=~/./g)[0]:split('\\|')&&$_[rand +@_]} map{split/\[(.+?)\]/}<>` [download] Source file: `Hello [world\|planet\|dude\|there], [Name?]!` [download] Hmm,.. but it does appear to print extra '0's when I use the original text. Let me investigate why that's the case ... update:* This works: `print map{if(s/\?$/? /){print STDERR;(<>=~/.*/g)[0]}@z=split/\\|/;$z[ra +nd@z]} map{split/\[(.+?)\]/}<>` [download] _____________________ `# Under Construction` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by japhy (Canon) on Jul 17, 2002 at 18:43 UTC
I get zeroes in the output when I use this. _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area) `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply]
Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by japhy (Canon) on Jul 17, 2002 at 15:44 UTC
How bizarre. I was thinking of writing one last night. I'll post my golf here soon. _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area) `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply]
�Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 17, 2002 at 21:40 UTC
You might start with the column that got me the most flack of anything I've written. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: (Golf) Mad-Lib Generator by MrCromeDome (Deacon) on Jul 17, 2002 at 13:15 UTC
Excellent post. . . ++ to you =) You spelled my name incorrectly though ;) MrCromeDome, not MrChromeDome (no H in it ;) MrCromeDome	[reply]