HACKER Q&A
📣 themodelplumber

Does anybody remember this random text-substitution software?


Years back, someone here linked to what I remember as a Wikipedia article for a software tool that would take text like this:

    I'd {like|like to take a moment|really like} to show you {our project|this project}
And randomly choose and insert one of the strings inside of the brackets.

Does anybody remember that? I'm looking for that or a similar software package / script. I think I could write it myself but I'm hoping I don't need to roll my own as it's just one more component in a larger project. Thanks!

  👤 dylz Accepted Answer ✓
The phrase is 'text spinner', you can probably find snippets for parsing it in anything. it's largely used in spam.
👤 LarryMade2
Doesn't look hard to create - like the format. I did one for a silly fortune teller where I set up the random parts into individual arrays... This makes more sense,, a little bit more parsing code but easier to maintain.
👤 kburman
I think I once saw this feature in a bulk SMS sender. It might be Twillo but not sure about it.