Re: Abbreviations..

From: Chris Herringshaw (xxviper@med.umich.edu)
Date: 06/20/95


Imagine this.  I am a rampant player killer with a hatred of every 
living breathing player on your MUD.  So, after carefully building
a top-notch character (KnightHawkRevenge) capable of whooping ass, I 
create a buffer character called "KnightHawkReveng", and make him the
leader of the group.  I move around using the buffer character, so
that he appears first on the room's player content list.  Now,
unless you either (1) handle your player list differently, or (2)
type the full name of the player killer, your going to hit the buffer
character.  *ANY* abbreviation of the player-killer's name will return 
the buffer character.  Not real helpful when your trying to not
get your butt kicked during a p-kill attempt.  This has worked
nicely on many a new MUD.

How do you fix it?  Well, the easiest and most effective way is to
search twice.  Once trying for a full-name match, and the second 
pass looks for any abbreviations of the search name.  You cannot
check both at the same time for obvious reasons. Not real 
efficient, but it solves the problems easily.  This is, of course, 
assuming you have asshole players like me on your MUD.  =)

====================================================================
Christopher Herringshaw     Networking and Special Projects Division
Medical Center Information Technology (MCIT)   xxviper@med.umich.edu
University of Michigan Medical Center, B1911 CFOB
1414 Catherine Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0704       (313) 747-2778
====================================================================

On Tue, 20 Jun 1995, Richard Stewart wrote:

> 
> Hi, I was working on a way to make Circle mud accept abbreviations for 
> just about anything (eg instead of kill peacekeeper.. it's kill pea .. 
> same for object and NPC/PC).. Well I wondered if anyone else has done 
> this yet.. The way I am using at the moment is by adding :
> 
>    if (is_abbrev(curstr,curname))           <- thats all!
>         return (1);
> 
>  in amongst the other 'if' queries in the function 'isname' in handler.c..
> I have found no bugs with this method, but have only tested it locally. 
> As I have miniaml knowlegde of C, can anyone point out any problems with 
> this way of doing it, or if it would be a suitable way of doing it ?
> 
> 
> 
> \_\_\_                               _/_/_/
>  \_\_\_       Richard Stewart       _/_/_/
>   \_\_\_                           _/_/_/
> 
> 
> 
> 



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