How about this: 

%madname = ( ## Uppercase easy to see in the story file
  "NOUN" => "a noun",
  "VERB" => "a verb",
  "ADJ" => "an adjective");

$storyfile = shift or die "I need a filename!\n";
open(STORY, "$storyfile") || die "Could not open $storyfile: $!\n";
while (<STORY>) {
  push(@lines, $_);
  ## Count total inserted words
  while (m/\[(NOUN|VERB|ADJ)\]/g) {
    $madlib{$1}++;
  }
}
close(STORY);

for $x (sort keys %madlib) {
  for $y (1..$madlib{$x}) {
    print "Please give me $madname{$x}: ";
    chomp($answer{$x.$y} = <STDIN>);
  }
  $madlib{$x}=1; ## reset this
}

## Tricky part...
for (@lines) {
  s/\[(NOUN|VERB|ADJ)\]/$answer{$1.$madlib{$1}++}/ge;
  print;
}
exit;

[download]

As a bonus, you can have more than one "madlib" on a line, like this: 

She dropped the [ADJ] [NOUN] and ran into the [ADJ] house.

[download]

You also don't have to worry about numbering them, or keeping a total count - the program does that for you.

In reply to Re: An Elegance Question by turnstep
in thread An Elegance Question by Simplicus

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.