richjb — Fri, 11 Aug 2000 06:00:18 +0000

To tell the truth, I'm having a lot of problems trying to...don't get me wrong; I'm good at PERL, but as a CGI language, and not as just a regular one. This book takes for granted that I am used to typing ym code right into the interpretuer (sp?), which I'm not. I've been trying to figure this out since you posted your message a few days ago.

You said you didn't want to code but that's the best I could to (I found the info online somewhere, but lost it, otherwise I would point you to that):

sub weight_to_dist {
 my %weights = @_;
 my %dist = ();
 my $total = 0;
 my ($key, $weight);
 local $_;
 foreach (values %weights) {
  $total += $_;
 }
 while ( ($key, $weight) = each %weights ) {
  $dist{$key} = $weight/$total;
 }
 return %dist;
}

sub weighted_rand {
 my %dist = @_;
 my ($key, $weight);
 while (1) {
  my $rand = rand;
  while ( ($key, $weight) = each %dist ) {
   return $key if (rand -= $weight) < 0;
  }
 }
}

I don't know what to pass to it (I tried several things, none worked), and my best guys is that $key is the rand number it produces. If you figure anything out, please tell me!

Richard

123finder.com — Fri, 11 Aug 2000 05:06:37 +0000

I don't have that book, so if you have time, please grasp the basic idea. I really love to know it!!

I don't need the code, since I think I might code it in PHP. The algorithm is most important for me. Thanks for your help in advance!

richjb — Fri, 11 Aug 2000 04:43:49 +0000

Recipe 2.11 of the CGI/PERL Cookbook covers what you want to do...but I'm not sure of how it works, and am not sure if I can post the code.

Richard