Re: [MacPerl] poets mix problems

[miku <miku@onlinehome.de>]

The idea is old, it's just a programming exercise. Thanks for pointing me t=
o
the docs and "travesty". Now I have the idea of implementing another
variable which allows the user to determine how many characters the script
will fetch (fixed or random number). Thanks a lot!

Michael

> Von: Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>
> Datum: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 23:28:57 -0500
> An: miku <miku@onlinehome.de>
> Cc: Mac Perl <macperl@macperl.org>
> Betreff: Re: [MacPerl] poets mix problems
>=20
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2000 at 10:47:17PM +0200, miku wrote:
>> The idea of the program is to read in all writers' texts into one single
>> string, let the user input a starting string of random length and then h=
ave
>> her/him input how many new characters in the style of the writers there =
are
>> to be produced. Then the script scans the single-line text (called
>> "wholetext") for all appearances of the starting string and collects all
>> letters *following* this starting string within "wholtext". Out of this =
set
>> (if it's empty, a random letter is invented) the script then chooses one
>> character by random =AD a new character to output is born. Then, for the=
 next
>> character to be invented, the script appends the newly found character t=
o
>> the starting string and in turn trashes its first letter. So a new
>> "starting" string is created. And now the seach begins anew, until the
>> needed number of new characters is printed on-screen and, simultaneously=
,
>> into a file. The result, I think, should be very funny, and - with
>> increasing length of the starting string - create more and more of an
>> approximation to the original texts. For instance, a starting string of
>> length 4 would create a more random (and somewhat erratic or cryptic) pi=
ece
>> of literature than a starting string of length 9 or 10 which would be mu=
ch
>> more determining.
>=20
> Sounds sort of like travestry, which is in the eg/ directory of the Perl
> distribution.  That one works on words, though, whereas yours will work o=
n
> characters.
>=20
> MacPerl doesn't come with the eg/ directory.  You can download travesty a=
t
> <http://linguist.dartmouth.edu/~rjk/travesty>.  This is the version from
> Programming Perl, 1st ed. (with one bug fix).  It will run until
> terminated.
>=20
>=20
>> More to the point, my problem is: if I do a pattern search, non-letter
>> non-number characters like "." within the starting string might be
>> interpreted as wildcards or other embedded options/commands
>> (meta-characters). How can I make the search interpret its pattern as a
>> plain-text string that might contain *all* 256 characters of my characte=
r
>> set?
>=20
> /\Q$regex/
>=20
> See the documentation of quotemeta in perlfunc and \Q in perlop.
>=20
>=20
>> And how can I construe and apply a mapping function that extracts all
>> single characters following the starting string in "wholetext"?
>=20
> @matches =3D $wholetext =3D~ /(?=3D\Q$starting_string\E(.))/gs;
>=20
> I use a positive lookahead asserion, (?=3D), because the starting string =
may
> overlap with itself.  For example, if the starting string is 'abab', and
> wholetext is "XXXabababbXXX", there are two occurences of 'abab', which
> happen to overlap.  The first is followed by 'a', and the second is
> followed by 'b'.
>=20
>=20
> Ronald
>=20
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>=20
>=20


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