On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Erwin S. Andreasen wrote:
>> Even better than versioning is to just tack values onto the end of the
>> line. Then have the server check how many arguments it actually read
>> (sscanf). If it didn't get all of them, just fill in a default.
>
>No, possibly in THIS case where the original poster wanted to add one
>number, but definitely not generally.
No, not generally, but in the case of simple expansion it is the best.
>You can't add non-integer values doing that, like strings, words. You
>can't remove values, say you have a format that looks like:
You can add non-integer without a whole lot of work. Read the line, test
if the first character is a number otherwise parse a string. You can get
fancier to make sure you don't get them mixed up on accident but that's the
basic concept.
>useless-integer useless-integer 4 useless-integer
>
>which you want to be
>
>4
>
>MERC area files are like that; lots of useless stuff from Diku
if (sscanf("%d %d %d %d\n", &a, &b, &c, &d) != 4)) {
c = a;
b = a = d = 0;
}
You still have the value you wanted in 'c'.
>Plus, versioning can be used not only to change area file format, but to
>modify all existing mobs - say you want to change from a 1-40 to 1-100
>level MUD and want to adjust all mobs but only once (nothing I would ever
>really recommend doing, but I couldn't find a better example).
Modifying mobs is one thing you can't do this way. (Unless you test for how
many values you read on a line and set a flag that then says to do
conversion.)
--
George Greer - Me@Null.net | Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity
http://www.van.ml.org/~greerga | is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard
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