in reply to Show different text based on random number

Everyone's problems are more interesting than mine. As long as I can write idiopathically. Idiomatically, I mean. I meant idiomatically.

use strict;   # DO NOT OMIT.
use warnings; # DITTO.

my $dir = shift || die "Gimme a dir full of text files!\n";
my $random_texter = build_texter(dir => $dir);

print $random_texter->();

exit;

sub build_texter {
    require List::Util;
    require Path::Tiny;
    require Carp;
    my %arg = ( dir => "YOU FORGOT TO SET THE DIR!",
                suffix => "", # e.g., .txt
                @_ );
    my $dir = Path::Tiny::path($arg{dir});
    -d $dir && -r _ || Carp::croak("$dir is not a readable directory")
+;
    my @files = grep /\Q$arg{suffix}\E\z/, grep -f, $dir->children;
    Carp::croak("There are no matching files in $dir") unless @files;
    sub { [ List::Util::shuffle( @files ) ]->[0]->slurp };
}

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Re^2: Show different text based on random number
by kevbot (Vicar) on Apr 23, 2016 at 05:03 UTC
    I like your version, since you don't have to list the text files in the script...and you can add a choice simply by adding a file to the directory. It inspired me to update my version: 
    #!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Path::Tiny;

my $dir_path = path('text_files');
my @choices = $dir_path->children;

unless( scalar @choices > 0 ){
    die "No text files found in $dir_path";
}

my $random_path = $choices[rand scalar @choices];
my $text = $random_path->slurp;

print "The text is: $text\n";

exit;

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