use Perl

• gcc nested functions (Score:1)

  by mary.poppins (3530)

  I think that gcc's nested functions are fun. I wish they'd been
  added to the C99 standard....
  
  A fun ML thing is partially applied functions: If foo takes two
  args, a and b, then (foo a) is the same as (fun b -> foo a b).
  Of course, to do this you need static typing.
  
• Choices (Score:2)

  by petdance (2468)

  Or even more easily generated choices:

  foreach my $cmd (keys %choices) {
    for my $i (1..length $cmd) {
      $choices{substr($cmd, 0, $i)} = $choices{$cmd};
    }
  }

  N, NO, NOR, NORT, NORTH....

  --
  

  --
  xoa
  • Re:Choices (Score:2)

    by htoug (771)

    That will only work as long as the choices are unique on the first letter.

    It would be much better to use the Text::Abbrev module (it's part of the core). It'll create unique abbreviations. Of course the code would be a little more convoluted:

    use Text::Abbrev;
    my %abbrev_choices;
    my %abbrevs = abbrev(keys %choices);
    foreach my $abbrev (keys %abbrevs) {
      $abbrev_choices{$abbrev} = $choices{$abbrevs{$abbrev}};
    }
    %choices = %abbrev_choices;

    (or something like that - completely untested and of my hat)
  • Re:Choices (Score:2)

    by BooK (2612)

    Or, rather than filling the hash with small keys, make a smarter dispatcher:

    # find those commands which could match
    @cmd = grep { /^$cmd/ } keys %cmd;
    # die if none or several commands match
    die "Ambiguous command $cmd (@cmd)" if @cmd != 1;
    # call the routine
    $cmd{shift@cmd}(@args);

    Mmm, $cmd, @cmd and %cmd used in 3 lines... That's one point in the Perl purity test. :-)