---
name: "Data::Random::WordList"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "perl-data-random"
version: "0.15-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/Data::Random::WordList"
---

# Data::Random::WordList(3pm)

Perl module to get random words from a word list

## NAME

Data::Random::WordList - Perl module to get random words from a word list

## SYNOPSIS

```
  use Data::Random::WordList;
  my $wl = new Data::Random::WordList( wordlist => '/usr/dict/words' );
  my @rand_words = $wl->get_words(10);
  $wl->close();
```

## DESCRIPTION

Data::Random::WordList is a module that manages a file containing a list of words.

The module expects each line of the word list file to contain only one word.  It could thus be easily used to select random lines from a file, but for coherency's sake, I'll keep referring to each line as a word.

The module uses a persistent filehandle so that there isn't a lot of overhead every time you want to fetch a list of random words.  However, it's much more efficient to grab multiple words at a time than it is to fetch one word at a time multiple times.

The module also refrains from reading the whole file into memory, so it can be safer to use with larger files.

## METHODS

### new()

Returns a reference to a new Data::Random::WordList object.  Use the "wordlist" param to initialize the object:

- •

  wordlist - the path to the wordlist file.  If a path isn't supplied, the wordlist distributed with this module is used.

### get\_words(\[NUM\])

NUM contains the number of words you want from the wordlist.  NUM defaults to 1 if it's not specified.  **get\_words()** dies if NUM is greater than the number of words in the wordlist.  This function returns an array or an array reference depending on the context in which it's called.

### close()

Closes the filehandle associated with the word list.  It's good practice to do this every time you're done with the word list.

## VERSION

0\.12

## AUTHOR

Originally written by: Adekunle Olonoh

Currently maintained by: Buddy Burden (barefoot@cpan.org), starting with version 0.06

## COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2000-2011 Adekunle Olonoh. Copyright (c) 2011-2015 Buddy Burden. All rights reserved.  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

## SEE ALSO

Data::Random