I am currently developing a generic web-based multiple choice testing system backend for a road safety project I'm currently working on. The system, Multiple Choice Assessment System (MCAS), has already given me a lot of problems (but BTW thanks to arturo, clemburg, mattr and Chmrr who have already helped me out a lot!).

All the questions are stored in a simple text file. A sample question looks like this:

question=When driving towards a bright setting sun, glare can be reduc
+ed by
option1=closing one eye
option2=dipping in the interior mirror
option3=wearing dark glasses
option4=looking sideways
answer=4
answertext=Dark glasses are often used as a fashion item but they do h
+ave their practical uses. Low sun in the early morning or evening can
+ dazzle and distract. Lessen the risk by reducing the glare. Wear dar
+k glasses if they help you to see better. 
category1=car
category2=vechicle handling
[download]

Questions in the file are delimited by \n===\n and each question may have a variable number of lines (as number of options can vary and some questions have 'visual aids' etc.)

The idea is that each test has n questions (n is specified in a config file). A script is run on the main questions file that produces a preset number of 'test files'. When the system is eventually ready to 'go live', a random 'test file' is selected and converted to HTML to be displayed to the user.

What I'm having trouble with now is my make_tests.pl script that, as the name implies :-) creates the 'test files'. It is meant to randomly select n questions from the main questions file and save them as a 'test file'. Thanks partially to the above monks and partially to 'The Perl Cookbook', I know have the following code (that is intended to return a random list of n questions):

sub get_std_test { 
  die +(caller(0))[3].' cannot be called in void context' 
    if not defined wantarray; 

  $/ = "===\n";   # set our delimiter  
  
  my %config = mcas::get_config(); # returns a hash of all config vars
  my $count = 0; 
  my @questions; 

  open QUESTIONS, '<questions' or die "Cannot open QUESTIONS file: $!"
+; 
  while (<QUESTIONS>) {
    if (rand($.) < 1) { 
      if ($count == $config{num_questions_per_test}) { 
        last; 
      } else { 
        push @questions, $_; 
        $count++
      }
    }
  } 
  close QUESTIONS;
  
  die "\$count = $count, < num_questions_per_test config var" 
    if ($count < $config{num_questions_per_test}); 

  return @questions; 
}
[download]

The function currently seems to return only lines, not whole questions. I think clemburg in particular might have warned me about this, and said that I needed some kind of 'read_record' routine but I've got no idea how to go about this (in particular, how to 'maintain state' or maintain file position between different invocations of the function).

If anyone can offer any advice (or even code!), I'd greatly appreciate it.

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