-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use PDFLib;

my @words = <DATA>;
chomp @words;

warn("got @words\n");

my $cards = shift @ARGV || die "Must supply number of cards\n";

print "Making $cards bingo cards\n";

my $pdf = PDFLib->new(
    filename => "bingo.pdf",
    papersize => "a4",
    creator => "Matt Sergeant",
    author => "Heather Sergeant",
    title => "Bingo!",
);

foreach my $i (1..$cards) {
    my %seen;

    print "Card $i\n";
    
    $pdf->start_page;
    
    $pdf->set_font(face => "Helvetica", size => 30, bold => 1);

    $pdf->print_boxed("Bingo!", mode => "center", x => 0, y => 740, w 
+=> 595, h => 50);
    
    $pdf->rect(x => 100, y => 200, w => 400, h => 400);
    $pdf->stroke;

    $pdf->set_font(face => "Helvetica", size => 20, bold => 0);

    for my $x (1..4) {
        for my $y (1..4) {
            my $word;
            while (1) {
                my $index = rand(@words);
                $word = $words[$index];
                if (!$seen{$word}) {
                    $seen{$word}++;
                    last;
                }
            }
            $pdf->print_boxed($word, mode => "center", x => (100 + (($
+x - 1) * 100)), y => (160 + (($y - 1) * 100)), w => 100, h => 100);
            if ($y != 1) {
                $pdf->move_to( 100, (200 + (($y - 1) * 100)) );
                $pdf->line_to( 500, (200 + (($y - 1) * 100)) );
                $pdf->stroke;
            }
        }
        if ($x != 1) {
            $pdf->move_to( (100 + (($x - 1) * 100)), 200 );
            $pdf->line_to( (100 + (($x - 1) * 100)), 600 );
            $pdf->stroke;
        }
    }
}

$pdf->finish;

1;
__DATA__
WORDS HERE
[download]

You could speed things by shuffling @words right before the two inner loops.

foreach my $i (1..$cards) {
    my %seen;
       .
       .
       .
    for my $x (1..4) {
        for my $y (1..4) {
            my $word;
            while (1) {
                my $index = rand(@words);
                $word = $words[$index];
                if (!$seen{$word}) {
                    $seen{$word}++;
                    last;
                }
            }
              .
              .
              .
[download]

becomes:


use Algorithm::Numerical::Shuffle qw /shuffle/;
   .
   .
   .
foreach my $i (1..$cards) {
       .
       .
       .
    @words = shuffle @words;
    for my $x (1..4) {
        for my $y (1..4) {
            my $word = shift @words;
              .
              .
              .
[download]


HTH,
Charles K. Clarkson
Clarkson Energy Homes, Inc.

Have you benchmarked that to see if it's faster?

My suspicion would be that for large data sets it would be, but for smaller ones my naive rand() implementation would be quickest.

I just realised that of course every card can win! So the only challenge is how to produce a set of unique cards, and the only input needs to be the number of cards.

Please delete the above node :-(