NAME

Acme::MetaSyntactic::List - Base class for simple lists of names

SYNOPSIS

            

              
              
package Acme::MetaSyntactic::beatles;
use Acme::MetaSyntactic::List;
our @ISA = ( Acme::MetaSyntactic::List );
__PACKAGE__->init();
1;
=head1 NAME
Acme::MetaSyntactic::beatles - The fab four theme
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Ladies and gentlemen, I<The Beatles>. I<(hysteric cries)>
=cut
__DATA__
# names
john paul
george ringo
            
          

DESCRIPTION

Acme::MetaSyntactic::List is the base class for all themes that are meant to return a random excerpt from a predefined list.

METHOD

Acme::MetaSyntactic::List offers several methods, so that the subclasses are easy to write (see full example in SYNOPSIS):

new()

The constructor of a single instance. An instance will not repeat items until the list is exhausted.

init()

init() must be called when the subclass is loaded, so as to read the __DATA__ section and fully initialise it.

name( $count )

Return $count names (default: 1).

Using 0 will return the whole list in list context, and the size of the list in scalar context.

theme()

Return the theme name.

AUTHOR

Philippe 'BooK' Bruhat, <book@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2005-2012 Philippe 'BooK' Bruhat, All Rights Reserved.

LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.