* * * * *
                                        
                            Generative text in guile
                                        
I'm amazed at how quickly I was able to cobble up a generative text program
in Lisp. Well, Scheme. Technically guile [1], the GNU (GNU's Not Unix) [2]
version of Scheme. I didn't bother with parsing the existing datafiles—
instead I did the “arrays of strings and a slew of code (actually, very
little) to sling the pieces together, but it was darned near trivial. The
entire program, sans array declarations, comes down to:

> (define rndstate 0)
> (define refn     array-ref) ;; return an element from an array
> 
> (define (main args)
>         (set! rndstate (seed->random-state (current-time)))
>         (display (racter))
>         (display "\n\n")
>         (exit 0)
> )
> 
> 
> ;; return the size of an array
> (define (nref a) (car (array-dimensions a)))
> 
> ;; return a random element from an array
> (define (ref a)  (array-ref a (random (nref a) rndstate)))
> 
> ;; sling those strings
> (define (racter)
>   (eval (cons 'string-append (array->list (ref default-template)))
>         (interaction-environment)
>   )
> )
> 

The code [3] itself is mostly array declarations (and this particular bit of
code is a translation from _Games Ataris Play_ [4]—hey, it was a couple of
bucks from a used book store) with this bit of code at the bottom.

There are some features I want to add to this, but they shouldn't take all
that much code. Once I get this working how I want it, it should be pretty
straightforward to convert the existing datafiles I have into [DELETED-Lisp-
DELETED][DELETED-Scheme-DELETED]guile.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/
[2] http://www.gnu.org/
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/03/11/scifi.scm
[4] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0881901180/conmanlaborat-20

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.