When I write Perl, on my own, it looks like the following. This is Perl written in the “functional” style I advocate.

The code takes a listing of simple definitions:

    tree
    noun
    something organic with leaves

        _etc._

and turns it into LaTeX Beamer–class slide markup.

    
    \frame{
        \frametitle{tree       }
        \begin{itemize}
            \item tree
              \pause
        \item noun
        \pause
        \item
    something organic with leaves
        \end{itemize}
    }
    

When the Beamer LaTeX code is complied with pdflatex it produces a slide show that winds up looking something like…

You can see how something like this is handy for someone studying their GRE Vocabulary builder. Code after the jump.

[code lang=”perl”]

!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; use vars qw/$end_of_document $word $part $meaning/;

=head1 NAME

wordlst_to_beamer.pl - A plaintext to LaTeX-Beamer dialect converter

=head1 SYNOPSIS

wordlst_to_beamer definition_file

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This program takes a simply formatted text file that contains a series of ” blocks”. Each block is equivalent to one definition ( see SOURCE DEFINITION ).
Each definition is then taken to be a “slide” in LaTeX Beamer style.

The purpose of doing so is to make each slide, effectively, a flash card.
The word is printed, pause, part of speech given, pause, and then the definition given.

=head1 SOURCE DEFINITION

The text file that is given as an argument to the program should be a collection of definitions separated by a double carriage return.

tree noun a living thing with leaves

happy adjective a feeling like you want to dance Charleston

I

=head1 SUBROUTINES

Given the beautiful functional style in which this code was written and the relative brevity of each routine, the code serves as sufficient documentation.

=cut

&main();

#

Subroutines

#

sub main { &report_status( &produce_beamer_body( &test_contents_integrity ( &load_contents_of_file( &test_validity_of_file ( &get_file_to_operate_on( &load_environment() )))))); }

#

sub report_status { unless ( $_[0] ) { print “Successfully ran.\n” } else { die “Error!\n” } }

#

sub produce_beamer_body { (my $latex_output_file = $_[0]->{file} ) =~ s/..*$// ;

open (LATEX, ">$latex_output_file.tex");

# A technique to tell Perl not to paginate
# ( i.e. re-print LATEX_TOP format ) again

my $ltx = select LATEX;
$= = 9990;
select $ltx;

my ($ds) = $_[0]->{data_structure};

my @order = sort { $a  <=> $b } ( keys ( %$ds ) );
for ( @order )
{
    $word    = $ds->{$_}[0];
    $part    = $ds->{$_}[1];
    $meaning = $ds->{$_}[2];
    chomp($word, $part, $meaning);
    write (LATEX);
}

print LATEX $end_of_document;
close LATEX;

return $? }

#

sub test_contents_integrity { my $content_string = join (”, @{+ $_[0]->{contents} } ); my @clustered_contents_ray = split ( /\n\n/, $content_string);

my $counter      = 0;
my $cell_counter = 0;

my %data_structure;

for ( @clustered_contents_ray )
{
    $counter++;
    my @temp_array = split ( /\n/, $_);

    if ( scalar ( @temp_array ) != 3 )
    {
        print "There was something amiss with entry:\n$_";
        exit 1;
    }
    else
    {
        $cell_counter +=3;
    }
    $data_structure{$counter} = \@temp_array;
}

if ( ($cell_counter % 3) == 0 ) { $[0]->{‘data_structure’} = \%data_structure; return $[0]; } else { die “Data structure was anomalous.” } }

#

sub load_contents_of_file { my $f = $[0]->{file_fullpath}; open ( IN, $f ) or die (“Could not open $f because [$!]”); my @contents = ; close IN; $[0]->{contents} = \@contents; return $_[0]; }

#

sub test_validity_of_file { my $f = $[0]->{file_fullpath}; die (“Could not read file [$f][$!]”) unless ( -r $f ); return $[0]; }

#

sub get_file_to_operate_on { my $filename = shift( @ARGV ) || ”; my $default_filename=’hit_parade_list_1.txt’;

my $payload = {};

if ( $filename =~ /\w/)
{
    chomp $filename;
    $payload->{file} = $filename
}
else
{
    $payload->{file} = $default_filename
}

$payload->{file_fullpath} = 
     join ( "/", (`pwd` =~ /(.*)\n/), 
     $filename ? $filename : $default_filename);

return $payload;

}

#

sub load_environment {

format LATEX_TOP= \documentclass{beamer} \begin{document} .

format LATEX = \frame{ \frametitle{@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<} $word \begin{itemize} \item @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< $word \pause \item @<<<<<<<<<<<< $part \pause \item @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< $meaning \end{itemize} } .

$end_of_document = <

\end{document};

EOF ;

}

[/code]

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Technology and Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.