My friend Will can never decide where to go for dinner. So out of frustration, I threw this together one night so we could spend less than 4-5 hours discussing where we were going for food!

Anyhow, our other friends are using it now, and I have a quickly growing list of requested features from them.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w 
#the whole purpose of this now-constantly evolving script to
#handle my friend's inabilities to pick a restaurant
#suggestions for further improvements are always welcome.

%cuisines =(
    'chinese' => ['hunan', 'general joes', 'feng ling', 'chinese cafe'
+],
    'italian' => ['napoli', 'star pizza', 'crostini'],
    'eclectic' => ['hobbit cafe','baba yega', 'brasil'],
    'mediterranean' => ["niko niko\'s",'cafe lili', 'cedars'],
    'american' => ['outback', "guggenheim\'s", 'goode company bbq',
           'cheesecake factory'],<br>

    'texmex' => ['mission burrito','berryhill', 'canyon cafe']);
print "Hi, who is this?\n:";
chomp($name = <STDIN>);
#will went in and adding the srand part...and a lot of
#white space for some reason....
if ($name =~ /^will\b/i)
{
    print "Okay, Time to choose where to go for dinner.\n";
    print "The following will provide a random restaurant name to go t
+o.\n";
    print "Pick one of the following: \n";
    print "Chinese, Italian, Eclectic, Mediterranean, American, or Tex
+Mex.\n";
    chomp($c_choice = <STDIN>);
    $c_choice =~ tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/;
    srand;
    print $cuisines{$c_choice}->[int(rand @{$cuisines{$c_choice}})],
        "\n";        
        #the extra stdin is to keep the script window open under windo
+ws98. sigh.
        <STDIN>;
}
else{
    print "You are not Will! Go away!\n";
}
[download]