Please ignore, just testing styles

The Comments Section of a Blog is Important

Some people still don't read a blog's comments. I encourage you to do so if the topic interests you. The original post is not complete without the comments, because in them you will often find corrections to the original post or suggestions that improve upon it.  Sometimes you will read comments that you feel add little, or, if it's especially popular (not mine), flame wars and maybe some spam. But it's better to have the conversation than a lone blog post with a single person's opinions and experiences.

I have been tempted in the past to update my own posts with valuable input from the comment section, but I think it's better to encourage folks to read them. What's useful to me might not be useful to you.

There's no single person that knows everything I know, but for any given topic, there's someone who knows more about it than I do.  That's why the comments are important.

But don't take my word for it. Trust me on that. :)

Saving Vertical Space

I was reviewing some code I had written for a simple RPG dice algorithm (although there's already a good module for this, Game::Dice) and I realized again that I have a prefererence for functions that can fit on one screen. One strategy is breaking up the code into smaller routines but I sometimes like to compact it vertically as much as possible first.

This function roll, given a string of "dice language," should return the results of such a dice roll. An example of this would be "3d10+1" to roll three 10-sided dice and then add 1, or "4d6b3" which says to roll four 6-sided dice and take the best three.

Here's the function before the refactor:

sub roll {
    my $input = shift;
    die unless $input =~ /d/;
    if ( $input =~ /(\d*)d(\d+)\s*(\D?)\s*(\d*)/ ) {
        my $num   = $1 || 1;
        my $die   = $2;
        my $plus  = $3;
        my $end   = $4;
        my $total = 0;
        my @dice;
        for my $count ( 1 .. $num ) {
            my $single = int( rand($die) ) + 1;
            push @dice, $single;
            print "$single\n";
        }
        if ( $plus eq 'b' ) {
            if ( $end > $num ) {
                $end = $num;
            }
            @dice = sort { $b <=> $a } @dice;
            $#dice = $end - 1;
        }
        for my $die (@dice) {
            $total += $die;
        }
        if ( $plus eq '+' ) {
            $total += $end;
        }
        elsif ( $plus eq '-' ) {
            $total -= $end;
        }
        elsif ( $plus eq '*' ) {
            $total *= $end;
        }
        elsif ( $plus eq '/' ) {
            $total /= $end;
        }
        return $total;
    }
    return;
}

The first thing I did is to delete the first of this pair of lines, which was redundant, because the line that follows also checks the format of the input:

die unless $input =~ /d/;
if ( $input =~ /(\d*)d(\d+)\s*(\D?)\s*(\d*)/ ) {

But instead of having that big if block, I changed it to this:

return unless $input =~ /(\d*)d(\d+)\s*(\D?)\s*(\d*)/;

Then I combined these:

my $die   = $2;
my $plus  = $3;
my $end   = $4;

into this:

my ($die,$plus,$end) = ($2,$3,$4);

Once I decided I didn't need to print each individual die as it was rolled, I could reduce this:

for my $count ( 1 .. $num ) {
    my $single = int( rand($die) ) + 1;
    push @dice, $single;
    print "$single\n";
}

to this:

push @dice, int(rand($die))+1 for ( 1..$num );

Then, I changed this:

if ( $end > $num ) {
    $end = $num;
}

To use the postfix if:

$end =  $num if $end > $num;

and this:

for my $die (@dice) {
    $total += $die;
}

to use postfix for:

$total += $_ for @dice;

One thing I like to do with an if/else chain like this:

if ( $plus eq '+' ) {
    $total += $end;
}
elsif ( $plus eq '-' ) {
    $total -= $end;
}
elsif ( $plus eq '*' ) {
    $total *= $end;
}
elsif ( $plus eq '/' ) {
    $total /= $end;
}

is to compress it like this:

if    ( $plus eq '+' ) { $total += $end }
elsif ( $plus eq '-' ) { $total -= $end }
elsif ( $plus eq '*' ) { $total *= $end }
elsif ( $plus eq '/' ) { $total /= $end }

Since it's still short in width and the syntax can lined up to be quite readable.

So the final version of the refactored function is:

sub roll {
    my $input = shift;
    return unless $input =~ /(\d*)d(\d+)\s*(\D?)\s*(\d*)/;
    my $num = $1 || 1;
    my ($die,$plus,$end) = ($2,$3,$4);
    my $total = 0;
    my @dice;
    push @dice, int(rand($die))+1 for ( 1..$num );
    if ( $plus eq 'b' ) {
        $end =  $num if $end > $num;
        @dice = sort { $b <=> $a } @dice;
        $#dice = $end-1;
    }
    $total += $_ for @dice;
    if    ( $plus eq '+' ) { $total += $end }
    elsif ( $plus eq '-' ) { $total -= $end }
    elsif ( $plus eq '*' ) { $total *= $end }
    elsif ( $plus eq '/' ) { $total /= $end }
    return $total;
}

Now you can make things a lot smaller (see Perl Golf examples) but readability is important to me, and I think this is arguably as readable as the original. I was actually a little surprised that perltidy barely touched the if/elsif structure, just screwing up the alignment a little on the first line:

if ( $plus eq '+' ) { $total += $end }
elsif ( $plus eq '-' ) { $total -= $end }
elsif ( $plus eq '*' ) { $total *= $end }
elsif ( $plus eq '/' ) { $total /= $end }

The code doesn't strictly adhere to Perl Best Practices, which is something I like to use as a guide for the most part, but perlcritic (which is based on Perl Best Practices) doesn't start to complain until the cruel setting, then bringing up things like postfix if, postfix for, and unless.

How would you make it smaller while still maintaining readability?