tao.pl

Here is the source code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# tao.pl - fetch verse from www.taoteching.org
#
# a number (1-81) of a specific chapter could be given.
# if not given, a random one will be selected.
#
#
# This script uses:
#
# subroutines / functions
# split
# foreach
# command line arguments
# regular expression
# substitution
# LWP module

use LWP::Simple;

# a utility to remove the linebreak tag 

# from a string.
sub clean_the_breaks {
    $s = shift;
    $s =~ s/<br />//;
    return $s;
}

# fetch a page from the website. Take a number 1-81 as argument.
sub tao {
    $num = shift;
    print "Chapter $num:\n\n";
    $page = get("http://www.taoteching.org/chapters/$num.htm");

    @lines = split("\n",$page);

    $state = 0;
    foreach $P (@lines) {
        if ($P =~ /<\/td>/ && $state == 1) { $state = 0; }
        if ($state == 1) { print clean_the_breaks($P)."\n"; }
        if ($P =~ /class="versecopy"/) { $state = 1; }
    }
}

# choose a random page. return number 1-81.
sub r_tao { tao(int(rand(80) + 1)); }

# Was a command line argument given? if so, fetch that
# number (1-81)
$num_args = $#ARGV + 1;
if ($num_args == 1) { 
    $arg = int($ARGV[0]);
    if ($arg > 0 && $arg < 82) { tao($arg); }
    else { r_tao(); }
} else { r_tao(); }