use vague;

# a not entirely serious pragmatic module to introduce vagueness # into your programming and allow more vagueness-oriented # programming constructs

NAME

vague - Perl pragma to reduce precision in your programming constructs

SYNOPSIS

use vague;

DESCRIPTION

This pragma exports a set of new, imprecise keywords into your namespace to facilitate fuzzy programming methodologies and nondeterministic algorithms.

none, hardly, few, some, many, quite, lots, most, almost, nearly, all

        If given a list of arguments these methods return some random subset
        of the list, from roughly 'none' items to roughly 'all' of them. If
        given a single scalar that is numeric they return a number that is
        appropriately smaller than the input variable. If given a string
        they return an appropriately long substring, starting at the start
        of the string.

any (@list)

        In scalar context it returns an element from its list of arguments.
        In list context it returns the entire list, shuffled.

                $x = any of qw(a b c d e f g h i j);
                foreach ( any qw(a b c d e f g h i j) ) {
                #...

roughly ($scalar [ $ceiling [ $floor [ $spread ]]])

        Returns a number that is roughly $scalar. Optionally you can supply
        a ceiling, and a floor, to limit the range returned. The $spread
        argument just says how wide the deviations can be.

generally $coderef or probably $coderef

Probably execute the code referred to. You can say, for example:

                probably sub { print "Hello world\n"; };
                generally \&trace('message');

random number, random word

        Returns a pseudo-random word if followed by 'word', or pseudo-random
        integer otherwise. The sequence repeats every 20 calls to this
        functions. Occasionally you will get 'feck!' or 22/7 returned
        instead of one of the usual values. This is normal behaviour.

of Does nothing, but allows nice English-like constructions such as:

for (most of 1..20) { # etc...

EXAMPLES

            print some of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;
            print nearly all of "And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green.";
            print hardly any of "And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green.";

            my $number = roughly 20;
            $number = almost 20;

            my @widgets = qw(a b c d e f g);
            my $x = any @widgets;

            for (most of 1..20) {
                    generally \&foo('hello');
            }

            probably sub { foo('prob') };

            for (1..30) {
                    print random word, " ", random number, "\n";
            }

            sub foo { my $msg = shift; print "In foo msg $msg\n"; }

AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT

P Kent, pause@selsyn.co.uk Nov 2001 This is covered by the same terms as Perl itself.

$Id: README,v 1.5 2001/12/20 05:14:43 piers Exp $