Here is the output of this perl script
http://www.politicsdebate.co.uk/cgi-bin/card.cgi

This is the perl code

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";

@suits=("hearts","clubs","spades","diamonds");
@cards=("ace","two","three","four","five","six","seven","eight","nine","ten","jack","queen","king");

$s=rand 40;
$c=rand 130;

$s=int $s/10;
$c=int $c/10;

print "$cards[$c] of $suits[$s]";

What's the shortest C++ translation of that code possible?

How do I do the arrays in an efficient way?

Whether or not anyone's going to help, I reckon I shall produce a version of the same script in...

C++
php
.aspx
java
hell, even javascript
plus a (bash)shell version to run on the commandline

Javascript

<script type="text/javascript">
var suits = new Array("hearts","clubs","spades","diamonds");
var cards = new Array("ace","two","three","four","five","six","seven","eight","nine","ten","jack","queen","king");

var s = Math.floor(Math.random() * 30);
var c= Math.floor(Math.random() *  120);

s = Math.round(s/10);
c = Math.round(c/10);

document.write(cards[c] + " of " + suits[s]);
</script>

nice! but...

Are you sure it should be 30 and 120?

I took zero into account in the 40 and 130...

if it falls between 0 to 10, the integer value is still 0.

As for taking the precaution to not go too far, maybe I should have made it 39 and 129, so that it couldn't be a 5 or 14.

I don't code in perl at all, it's a bit like Latin, a long dead language used by academics
But 0 to 3 is a four element array in javascript.

Math.floor will round downwards to the nearest integer so 40 could be used but the random number can be in the range 0 to 1, so if it does return 1 the value would be 40 and therefore out of range for the array.

I'll put the code in a page and test for getting full ranges later.

I think I should not have gone above 39 and 129 - I could test it by getting it to run the thing about 10,000 times...

looks like I'll have to run it 1,000,000 times to catch an error...

A perfect opportunity to finish the port while I'm waiting. And then there's still that quarter bottle of rum...

I stopped it at 200,000... not a single bad result. That's because I suppose when you do rand in perl, it isn't an integer, so rand 40 is really really really unlikely to ever hit 40 on the nose. it's still out there, a rogue likelihood. i think i should set a command running on about 10 million tests or even 100 million tests, to catch it out, but maybe not right now and certainly not on my commercial server!

#!/usr/bin/perl
$cow=rand 40;
print $cow;


[root@server cgi-bin]# perl perly.pl
3.06820604313558[cgi-bin]# perl perly.pl
24.8692611913795[cgi-bin]# perl perly.pl
22.6440182543958[cgi-bin]# perl perly.pl
30.7815393462444[cgi-bin]# perl perly.pl
10.5075733765626[cgi-bin]# perl perly.pl
35.189733098414[cgi-bin]#