Generating a quiz in Emacs Lisp?

Question

Forgive the "duplicate" question. I'd like to see this solved in Emacs Lisp too, and if I just tagged it for both topics, I probably would have only gotten one answer. The Emacs answer should be sufficiently different that it's probably worthwhile to have it.

I want to teach myself Spanish and I've got several word lists like the data show below. How can I generate a quiz from the data that looks like this?

amarillo?  [ ] blue    [ ] yellow  [ ] gray   [ ] pink
azul?      [ ] red     [ ] blue    [ ] green  [ ] orange
 .
 .
 .
verde?     [  ] purple [ ] gold   [ ] green   [ ] black

The idea is to randomly include the answer with 3 randomly chosen incorrect answers. Ideally, the incorrect answers would not be too repetitive.

amarillo|yellow
azul|blue
blanco|white
dorado|golden
gris|gray
marrón|brown
naranja|orange
negro|black
oro|gold
púrpura|purple
rojo|red
rosa|pink
verde|green

Answer 1

Ok, so I'm assuming that you have the input in a file opened in an Emacs buffer.

(defun insert-quiz (a-buffer)
  (interactive "bBuffer name: ")
  (let* ((question-pairs (split-string (with-current-buffer a-buffer (buffer-string))))
         (quiz-answers (mapcar (lambda (x) (cadr (split-string x "|"))) question-pairs)))
    (insert 
     (apply #'concat 
            (mapcar
             (lambda (x)
               (let ((q-pair (split-string x "|")))
                 (make-question (car q-pair) (answers-list quiz-answers (cadr q-pair)))))
             question-pairs)))))

insert-quiz is an interactive function that takes a buffer name, and uses the stuff in that buffer to generate a quiz for you, then insert that quiz at point as a side-effect. It calls some smaller functions which I'll explain below.

(defun make-question (question answers)
  (apply #'format
         "%-16s[ ] %-16s[ ] %-16s[ ] %-16s[ ] %s \n"
         (append 
          (list (concat question "?"))
          answers)))

make-question takes a question and a list of answers, and formats them as one line of the quiz.

(defun answers-list (quiz-answers right-answer)
  (replace (n-wrong-answers quiz-answers right-answer)
           (list right-answer)
           :start1 (random 3)))

answers-list takes a list of all possible answers in the quiz, and the right answer and uses n-wrong-answers to create a list of four answers, one of which is the correct one.

(defun n-wrong-answers (answer-list right-answer &optional answers)
    (if (= 4 (list-length answers))
        answers
      (n-wrong-answers 
       answer-list 
       right-answer 
       (add-to-list 'answers (random-wrong-answer answer-list right-answer)))))

n-wrong-answers takes a list of all possible answers in the quiz, and the right answer, then uses random-wrong-answer to return a list of four unique incorrect answers.

(defun random-wrong-answer (answer-list right-answer)
  (let ((gen-answer (nth (random (list-length answer-list)) answer-list)))
    (if (and gen-answer (not (string= gen-answer right-answer)))
        gen-answer
        (random-wrong-answer answer-list right-answer))))

Finally, at the lowest level, random-wrong-answer takes a list of all possible answers in the quiz, and returns a single wrong answer.

After you load the above functions into Emacs, use M-x insert-quiz and type the name of the buffer you have your input loaded into (you'll get tab completion). It wouldn't be too difficult to change the insert-quiz function so that it takes a filename rather than an open buffer-name.

The input you list above will yield:

amarillo?               [ ] yellow          [ ] orange          [ ] gray            [ ] red 
azul?                   [ ] gold            [ ] purple          [ ] blue            [ ] orange 
blanco?                 [ ] pink            [ ] red             [ ] white           [ ] black 
dorado?                 [ ] yellow          [ ] golden          [ ] red             [ ] orange 
gris?                   [ ] red             [ ] pink            [ ] gray            [ ] green 
marrón?                 [ ] brown           [ ] yellow          [ ] white           [ ] golden 
naranja?                [ ] orange          [ ] gold            [ ] black           [ ] golden 
negro?                  [ ] pink            [ ] black           [ ] blue            [ ] white 
oro?                    [ ] red             [ ] gold            [ ] purple          [ ] brown 
púrpura?                [ ] purple          [ ] orange          [ ] gray            [ ] black 
rojo?                   [ ] gray            [ ] red             [ ] black           [ ] pink 
rosa?                   [ ] red             [ ] green           [ ] pink            [ ] yellow 
verde?                  [ ] green           [ ] purple          [ ] red             [ ] brown 

Hope that helps.