Here's a version using an anonymous sub. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's probably much more readable, etc. than your initial version. I've changed many of your variable names. :)

Also, you said that you expect the first argument to be Text::Break; so you're calling this as a class method, then? I'm not sure that's necessary, really, because your routine isn't OO in the least. So I changed that. Mine also expects the array to be passed by reference. 

    package Text::Break;
    $VERSION = 0.01; :)

    sub break {
        my($text, $how_many) = @_;
        $how_many ||= 24;
        my $total = @$text;

        ## Anon sub $printer is a closure and has access
        ## to the $text array reference. Yes, there's really
        ## no point to having an anon sub here; I may as
        ## well just write the print statement inline. Oh well.
        my $printer = sub {
            my($start, $how_many) = @_;
            print @{$text}[$start..$start+$how_many-1];
        };

        my $printed = 0;

        ## Separate the printing from the input, etc.
        PAGER:
        while ($printed <= $total) {
            $printed = 0 unless $printed >= 0;

            $printer->($printed, $how_many);
            $printed += $how_many;

            print $printed >= $total ?
                "--No More--" : "--More--";
            my $in = <STDIN>;
            if ($in =~ /^b/i) {
                $printed -= $how_many * 2;
            }
            elsif ($in =~ /^x/i || $in =~ /^q/i) {
                last PAGER;
            }
        }
    }

[download]
To be invoked like this: 
    Text::Break::break(\@text, [ $lines ]);

[download]
where $lines is an optional argument specifying the number of lines to break on.

BTW: there's an example of Pager class in Damian Conway's Object Oriented Perl.

In reply to Re: Breaking Text by btrott
in thread Breaking Text by Anonymous Monk

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