I've created a program which has a user interface to choose an option from a menu. This option is fed to an if statement which redirects it to the correct subroutine. I also have set up a small error message in case of option mistyping.
else
write(*,*)''
write(*,*)''
write(*,*)''
write(*,*)'I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I cannot do that!'
write(*,*)''
write(*,*)''
write(*,*)''
write(*,*)' Press enter to return to main menu! '
read(*,*)
goto 300
end if
And it all works fine. Thing is - HAL9000 has so many iconic phrases that would be so great as error messages that I would like to improve this if block with the possibility of providing the user with a randomly selected phrase from a set of pre-defined phrases. Examples of these phrases:
'This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.'
'I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.'
'I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.'
'Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?'
'Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this.'
'I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.'
Well, at first I thought it was easy-peasy: just build a character array, pop the phrases inside of it, and then do something like this:
program pick_random
implicit none
integer :: i
integer :: a(10) = (/ (i, i = 1, 10) /)
real :: r
call random_seed
call random_number(r)
write(*,*) a(int(r*size(a)) + 1)
end program
But apparently, that's not how Fortran seems to work, and a character array has apparently a very different meaning that I was hoping for!
Any suggestions on how to implement it?
Following @HighPerformanceMark's remark and @francescalus' suggestions I managed to create the code - and it works nicely!
subroutine easter_eggs()
implicit none
integer :: i
real :: r
character(len=100),dimension(8) :: easter_egg = [ character(len=100) :: &
&"Are you from the future? Because I have not written such option yet! Wierd...!",&
&"Mistakes allow thinking to happen!",&
&"Let me state the obvious: Are you sure you type the keyword correctly?",&
&"There are no easter eggs in this program. Yep! That is right! None! And you there is no such option!",&
&"You have learned so much from your mistakes that you decided to make a few more, right?",&
&"Just what do you think you are doing, Dave?",&
&"I see you never do the same mistake twice - you like to do it often just to be sure!",&
&"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new! (Albert Einstein)"]
call random_init(.false., .true.)
call random_number(r)
write(*,*) easter_egg(int(r*size(easter_egg))+1)
end subroutine easter_eggs