Games::Dice - Perl module to simulate die rolls

  use Games::Dice 'roll';
  $strength = roll '3d6+1';

  use Games::Dice 'roll_array';
  @rolls = roll_array '4d8';

Games::Dice simulates die rolls. It uses a function-oriented (not object-oriented) interface. No functions are exported by default. At present, there are two functions which are exportable: roll and roll_array. The latter is used internally by roll, but can also be exported by itself.

The number and type of dice to roll is given in a style which should be familiar to players of popular role-playing games: adb[+-*/b]c. a is optional and defaults to 1; it gives the number of dice to roll. b indicates the number of sides to each die; the most common, cube-shaped die is thus a d6. % can be used instead of 100 for b; hence, rolling 2d% and 2d100 is equivalent. roll simulates a rolls of b-sided dice and adds together the results. The optional end, consisting of one of +-*/b and a number c, can modify the sum of the individual dice. +-*/ are similar in that they take the sum of the rolls and add or subtract c, or multiply or divide the sum by c. (x can also be used instead of *.) Hence, 1d6+2 gives a number in the range 3..8, and 2d4*10 gives a number in the range 20..80. (Using / truncates the result to an int after dividing.) Using b in this slot is a little different: it's short for "best" and indicates "roll a number of dice, but add together only the best few". For example, 5d6b3 rolls five six- sided dice and adds together the three best rolls. This is sometimes used, for example, in roll-playing to give higher averages.

Generally, roll probably provides the nicer interface, since it does the adding up itself. However, in some situations one may wish to process the individual rolls (for example, I am told that in the game Feng Shui, the number of dice to be rolled cannot be determined in advance but depends on whether any 6's were rolled); in such a case, one can use roll_array to return an array of values, which can then be examined or processed in an application-dependent manner.

This having been said, comments and additions (especially if accompanied by code!) to Games::Dice are welcome. So, using the above example, if anyone wishes to contribute a function along the lines of roll_feng_shui to become part of Games::Dice (or to support any other style of die rolling), you can contribute it to the author's address, listed below.

Philip Newton, <pne@cpan.org>

Copyright (C) 1999, 2002 Philip Newton All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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perl(1).