in reply to WitchTest - A Tool For Determining If A Woman Is Guilty Of Witchcraft

I am clearly lacking a sense of humor, not the least of which because, according to this test, I am infallibly a witch. Which means that the monastery is harboring at least one witch and probably a few more. Unless, of course, you are going to make the claim that women here are exempt from witchdom and witch testing by virtue of being monastery residents. (worked for Caris in Ken Follet's "World Without End"). Personally, I think that's lame.

Might as well burn me, beth (order of priestesses).

Update: Looking at your comments more closely I suspect you meant to satire, but it failed (at least for me). Good satire makes it blindingly obvious who the real fools are and has you laughing all the way. If you want a well-done example of witch-test satire see Monty Python witch scene where it is clearly proven from logic that any schoolchild would understand that $witchtest = { burn($witch, $wood) => weigh($witch, $duck) };

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Re^2: WitchTest - A Tool For Determining If A Woman Is Guilty Of Witchcraft
by Gavin (Archbishop) on Jul 02, 2009 at 09:59 UTC
    ++ ELISHEVA Perhaps the code should be rewriten so as not to be gender specific as witches can be both male and female.
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Re^2: WitchTest - A Tool For Determining If A Woman Is Guilty Of Witchcraft
by bpoag (Monk) on Jul 02, 2009 at 16:42 UTC
    WitchTest was not intended for intra-monestary use. It's more directed at our friends in New England, primarily, who have a need to process any possible backlog of witch accusations. I felt that Perl would be an ideal solution, well-suited for their needs.

    Even though there are varying degrees of witches, I suppose, the determination of a woman's propensity for acts of witchcraft is more boolean than scalar. For example, the 1692 Salem spec points out that at one point, a form of traditional white magic was used (in the form of a "witch cake") to determine who a witch was. The story goes that two young girls were afflicted with horrible pains and muscle spasms. Their mother (and her Caribbean indentured servant) prepared a cake made from rye and the urine of her affected daughters, and fed it to a dog. It was believed that the dog, upon consuming the cake, would cause the witch to feel equivalent pain to what she had intended for her victims. Witches were believed to transmit evil by particles/granules/droplets expelled from their eyes, and was eliminated in the effluvia (pee and poo) of the victim, hence the use of urine in the cake.

    Using white magic did not illicit much favor from the judge, as any form of magic departs from Puritan teachings--It's sort of backward logic, considering you're essentially asking the devil for help in defeating the devil. This sort of process would be well suited to automate via recursion, or by the very least, a long-sustained while loop capable of defeating the influence of the devil by means of rapid and sustained cake production and consumption:

    pseudocode: 
    while(true)
{
   ## Assuming a shared structure exists to represent cake..

   collectUrine();
   instantiateCakeObject();
   populateCakeObject(urine,rye);
   bakeCake();
   obtainDog();
   feedDog(@Cake);
   monitorSuspectedWitchesForSignsOfDistress();
}

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[d/l]

      Ah, but your premise is flawed - it isn't the witch hunters of Salem we need to aid and abet, but the witches. As for the monastery, we have powerful magic here and it isn't just limited to the women (though we do our share).

      Best, beth

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Re^2: WitchTest - A Tool For Determining If A Woman Is Guilty Of Witchcraft
by LanX (Saint) on Jul 09, 2009 at 09:28 UTC
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In Section Cool Uses for Perl