Andy,

I'm afraid that it's hard to see the Perl in this question.

The thing that springs to mind from your problem of allowing non-programmers to specify rules is a spread-sheet application. They allow users to specify equations with a simple grammer. Isn't that basically what you are talking about? Whenever possible I try to get any application that I write to mirror things that users are familiar with, so I would make my "rule" thingy act like a spreadsheet as much as possible. I would even say that this sounds like the type of problem best suited for a spreadsheet application, not that I'm mentioning any specific ones... *COUGH* *COUGH* *EXCEL* *COUGH* Excuse me. 

()-()
 \"/
  `

In reply to Re: Writing a by ignatz
in thread Writing a Billing System by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.