Re: [code] Playerfile conversion

From: Jeremy Elson (jelson@jhu.edu)
Date: 10/04/96


> > > Hopefully we'll see ascii pfiles in the future.
> > 
> > Well, ascii playerfiles ain't all glory :P You can have people mess
> > arround with it easily, and I've been told that on some operating systems
> > it will use a tremendous amount of space, not to mention that a flexible
> > ASCII player/obj/etc. file system would have to include a lot of 'fill'
> > information, like what type of field you are loading/saving etc. Ofcourse
> > the upside is, that it will (sometimes :P) be easier to add/delete entries
> > in ascii file formats, and that the portability will be very high (unless
> > some OS refuses to read ASCII pfiles *grin*).

I have decided to move to ASCII playerfiles some time in the future, but I
don't know when "the future" is.  I think the only good arguments against
ASCII is that they took up too much time (e.g. for loads/saves) and space
(e.g. because you have lots of small files instead of one big one).  The
time/space argument isn't as valid now, though, because even desktop PC's
are now much faster than the UNIX workstations I was using when I was
first working on Circle.  Also, rent and alias files are already lots of
small files so there will probably be a space savings anyway.

ASCII files are easier to work with offline, much easier to extend (i.e. 
to add new elements to the playerfile without having to wipe it), and can
easily be moved to other operating systems.  This last part is
particularly important, especially given the wide number of systems
CircleMUD has now been ported to. 

If I could snap my fingers and make ASCII playerfiles appear, I'd include 
it in 3.0.  But since I can't, it'll have to wait.

Jeremy

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