SYNOPSIS

    Use one of the WordList::* modules.

DESCRIPTION

    EARLY DEVELOPMENT, SPECIFICATION MIGHT STILL CHANGE CONSIDERABLY.

    WordList::* modules are modules that contain, well, list of words. This
    module, WordList, serves as a base class and establishes convention for
    such modules.

    WordList is an alternative interface for Games::Word::Wordlist and
    Games::Word::Wordlist::*. Its main difference is: WordList::* modules
    are designed to have low startup overhead. This makes it more suitable
    for use in CLI scripts which often only want to pick a word from one or
    several lists.

    Words (or phrases) must be put in __DATA__ section, *sorted*, one per
    line. By putting it in the __DATA__ section, perl doesn't have to parse
    the list. To search for words or picking some random words from the
    list, the module need not slurp the whole list into memory (and will
    not do so unless explicitly instructed.) Sorting must be
    asciibetical/by Unicode codepoint. This makes it more convenient to
    diff different versions of the module, as well as performing binary
    search.

    Since this is a new and non-backward compatible interface from
    Games::Word::Wordlist, I also make some other changes:

      * Namespace is put outside Games::

      Because obviously word lists are not only useful for games.

      * Interface is simpler

      The methods provided are just:

      - pick (pick one or several random entries)

      - word_exists (check whether a word is in the list)

      - each_word (run code for each entry)

      - all_words (return all the words in a list)

      A couple of other functions might be added, with careful
      consideration.

      * Namespace is more language-neutral and not English-centric

    TODOS:

      * Interface for random pick from a subset

      Pick $n words of length $L.

      Pick $n words matching regex $re.

      * Interface to enable faster lookup/caching

METHODS

 new()

    Constructor

 $wl->each_word($code)

    Call $code for each word in the list. The code will receive the word as
    its first argument.

 pick($n = 1) => list

    Pick $n (default: 1) random words from the list. If there are less then
    $n words in the list, only that many will be returned.

    The algorithm used is from perlfaq ("perldoc -q "random line""), which
    scans the whole list once. The algorithm is for returning a single
    entry and is modified to support returning multiple entries.

 word_exists($word) => bool

    Check whether $word is in the list.

    Algorithm is binary search (NOTE: not yet implemented, currently linear
    search).

 $wl->all_words() => list

    Return all the words in a list.

SEE ALSO

    Bencher::Scenario::GamesWordlistModules

    Bencher::Scenario::WordListModules