in reply to Fun with words (Golf?)

The following uses pretty much the original code, but dispenses with the naughty use of a module:

while(<DATA>){@x=split;for(@x){$o=/[.,]$/?2:1;$m=substr$_,0,1,'';
$e=substr$_,-$o,$o,'';$m.=substr$_,rand(length),1,''while$_;$_="$m$e"}
print"@x\n"}

[download]
__DATA__
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is pa
+ved with melting snowballs.
Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesi
+tate to make 10 ways to do something.
And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and s
+pace, because that's exactly how much difference there is.
Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't un
+derstand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses
+ Perl.
As usual, I'm overstating the case to knock a few neurons loose, but t
+he truth is usually somewhere in the muddle, uh, middle.
Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl i
+f I think they improve the language.

[download]

Update: remove a few more chars, and some more (Thanks Bart), and some more (ditto)

Perl is Huffman encoded by design.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Fun with words (Golf?)
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 09, 2005 at 09:56 UTC
    using s/// to detect the punctuation, and it can be shorter still: 
    while(<DATA>){for(@x=split){s/([.,]?)$//;$s=substr$_,0,1,'';
$e=chop;$s.=substr$_,rand(length),1,''while$_;$_="$s$e$1"}
print"@x\n"}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Meditations