What started off as a few silly lists of terms has lead to a little script that could help someone learn a little basic math or other applications which may need random math problems. The script generates two random numbers with a random operator (+ - * /) for someone to answer to the nearest integer (int). It also uses the specific terminology for the type of answer required: sum, difference, product, or quotient. So, it may not do a great deal, but I was told that it could be a nice math tutor, so I decided to share it with everyone and get some general feedback. If you have an expansion or a tweak, please let me know, I am always open for new ideas of what to do with little things like this I have lying around my hard drive.

I have to thank clinton for his help with the functions in the hash and a few other tweaks. I also have ambrus to thank for reminding me about the whole divide by zero thing which is why there are no zeros in the script and for the correct term for the solution to a division problem. :)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

local $\ = "\n";

my %math = (
  'addition' => {
    'result' => 'sum',
    'operator' => '+',
    'function' => sub {my ($i,$j) = @_; return $i + $j},
  },
  'subtraction' => {
    'result' => 'difference',
    'operator' => '-',
    'function' => sub {my ($i,$j) = @_; return $i - $j},
  },
  'multiplication' => {
    'result' => 'product',
    'operator' => '*',
    'function' => sub {my ($i,$j) = @_; return $i * $j},
  },
  'division' => {
    'result' => 'quotient',
    'operator' => '/',
    'function' => sub {my ($i,$j) = @_; return $i / $j},
  },
);

my $operation = (keys %math)[rand keys %math];

sub random_number {
  return (1..5)[rand 5];
}
my $random_number_1 = random_number();
my $random_number_2 = random_number();

sub math_answer {
  my ($answer) = @_;
  if ($answer eq "hint") {
    return qq($random_number_1 $math{$operation}{'operator'} $random_n
+umber_2);
    my $user_answer = <>;
    answer($user_answer);
  }
  elsif ($answer == int($math{$operation}{'function'}->($random_number
+_1,$random_number_2))) {
    return "True";
  }
  else {
    return "False";
  }
}

print qq(What is the $math{$operation}{'result'} of $random_number_1 a
+nd $random_number_2 to the nearest integer? (type "hint" to show the 
+equation));
my $user_answer = <>;
chomp $user_answer;

print math_answer($user_answer);
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