Re: Minor issues with assemblies patch.

From: Brian (borlick@mines.edu)
Date: 09/22/02


Mathew Earle Reuther wrote:
>
> I've installed the assemblies patch off the ftp site, and have it up and
> working with some modifications to make it work for my purposes.  However,
> I've got one issue with the way things are done.  I don't like the fact
> that you can only use one word in your argument!
<<snip>>

Although you've already received two solutions to this which essentially
work, this does bring up one small issue I've had with Circle: nearly
everything is referenced by a single keyword.  Myself, I've found this
annoying in the past when there are three hundred different "red"s on a
MUD, but only 3 "Red Monks".  However, if I want to go to the first red
monk, there was no easy solution.  Or, for instance, if you are wearing
a green ring, a blue ring, and have blue greaves on, and you wish to
"remove blue ring".  It's most notable in our old Circle 2.2 shops where
there is a "small mace" and a "large mace" for sale along with a "large
broadsword".  Most newbies do not know to type "buy 2.large"; instead
they instinctively "buy large mace" and glumly accept their brand new
broadsword.

There are many other places where I found matching for multiple aliases
more desirable than matching a single alias.  So, I recoded my
isname()/isexactname()/isabbrname() to check for multiple aliases by
attempting to match each space-separated alias in the input.  If the
input is just a single word, it operates the same as it did before.  And
many thing automatically work as expected since they use skip_spaces()
and then immediately call generic_find() or isname().  Routines which
use one_argument() need small rewrites.

True, this is quite a bit slower than the original routines, and these
are routines called repeatedly in a tight loop relatively often.  But
most of the time, the search list is composed of the items or mobs in a
room, and as such is pretty small.  The difference to me is not
noticeable even when searching the whole world for "goto 3.red monk".

It seems much more usable to me.  The only problem I've found is when
"more knowledgeable" players complain about being unable to do something
that is easily facilitated by multiple alias matching -- they don't
expect it because it's not stock.

Of course, YMMV.

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