Zugg Software :: View topic

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Hi everyone,... I've spent the last couple of days pouring through posts trying to find a workable solution to what I am trying to do, but as of yet, am unable...

What I want to do is check my "Affected By" list to see what it is that I am affected by... I created a new class called "Affected By Spells" then created integer variables of some of the basic spells, so that they could be set to a simple 0 or 1, for off or on, e.g.:

@dragonwit
@ogremight
@elvenbeauty
@slink
@sagacity
@trollishvigor

Then I created a trigger to check the "Affected By" list to see which spells I in fact am affected by, then set those variables to either on or off... Since Cmud apparently does not have an "else" command built into it, I was forced to first set all of the variables to off and then check to see whether or not they are on and change them to on, if in fact they are on...:

#VAR @sagacity 0
#VAR @dragonwit 0
#VAR @ogremight 0
#VAR @trollishvigor 0
#VAR @slink 0
#VAR @elvenbeauty 0
#SEND af
#IF (Affected: ~"sagacity") {@sagacity 1}
#IF (Affected: ~"dragon wit") {@dragonwit 1}
#IF (Affected: ~"ogre might") {@ogremight 1}
#IF (Affected: ~"trollish vigor") {@trollishvigor 1}
#IF (Affected: ~"slink") {@slink 1}
#IF (Affected: ~"elven beauty") {@elvenbeauty 1}

Unfortunately when I test this above code, it does not change the variable value, but outputs this on the screen instead:

0 1
0 1
0 1
0 1
0 1
0 1

The next step will be of course to check all of the variables inside of the "Affected by Spells" class to see which ones are set to 0, then cast the ones that are off...

Can anyone help me on this, what am I doing wrong in setting these variable values?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

You are doing a lot of things wrong here:

1)#VAR @sagacity 0

When referencing variables in #command syntax, you do not use the @ unless the variable you are referencing is the value of the variable, ahem, referenced. Since there's probably nothing in @Sagacity yet, you were actually trying to assign 0 to a variable with a blank name instead of to the Sagacity variable.

2)#IF (Affected: ~"sagacity") {@sagacity 1}

Everything in red in the above code needs to follow the rules of expressions and mathematical operators (=, >, >=, etc). Your attempt doesn't at all do so, so effectively it evaluates to non-zero. Since non-zero equates to true, your code produces the 0 1 you see.

3)#IF (Affected: ~"sagacity") {@sagacity 1}

CMud allows for the use of a=b syntax. Like with #1, you do not use the @ but you do need to include the =.

4)#IF (Affected: ~"sagacity") {@sagacity 1} {}

The part is red is the else codeblock for the #IF command. Alternatively, you can skip the entire #IF command in favor of the logical NOT operator: #variable Sagacity !@Sagacity

You demonstrated an interesting result of initiative in trying to figure this out, but you DO need to spend more time with the helpfile. It's what it's there for.

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Thank you, will read the help files and report back my success and/or failure, post trial and error...

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Ok, so I read what you said and certainly see how I was not properly assigning variables and I think that I have that understood and properly syntaxed... the problem I'm having now is pattern recognition of the aforementioned...

Here's what I go thus far... (note: I changed the variable names to end with the word "spell", so there wouldn't be any potential violations...)

#SEND af;
#IF (^~"Affected:" %s ~"bless") {blessspell = 1} {blessspell = 0};
#IF (^~"Affected:" %s ~"armor") {armorspell = 1} {armorspell = 0};

and tried this as well as many many other variations...

#SEND af;
#IF (^Affected: %s bless) {blessspell = 1} {blessspell = 0};
#IF (^Affected: %s sagacity) {sagacityspell = 1} {sagacityspell = 0};

From this it is setting all variables to 1, even when the spell is not currently on, giving false positives...

The "af" output looks like this...

<87/87hp 106/118m 250/250mv> af

Affected: bless
Affected: bless
Affected: armor

Apprentice Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 110

Your if statements aren't doing anything. IF checks a statement, as in @af = "bless", but you aren't asking it to evaluate anything. Rather, you are looking for a trigger.

To use it as a trigger, you would have #TR {^Affected: &affect} {processing commands here}

You now have a variable (@affect) with the name of the specific affect. You can then use #if to evaluate against your list of spells and set as appropriate. Alternatively, you could set a specific trigger for each possibility.
(for example, #TR {^Affected: bless} {blessspell = 1}

You won't have any "false" command here, since there is no "command if the trigger doesn't fire"

As a note, if you use a single trigger it will trigger multiple times if you get a list of affects, such as your example. Using the If statements you have would end up resetting every spell value except the last one to zero.
It would probably be best to NOT set non-affects to zero within this specific trigger, since you'll lose previous entries. You should have a separate trigger or command to reset them, perhaps as part of an alias that sets the values to zero, enables the triggers, and then calls for the list.

Mike

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

I guess I was assuming that the IF statement had a built in CONTAINS for pattern matching, thus giving a true or false... because that is really what I am trying to do, is check a line to see if it contains a matching pattern and if so, set a variable to 1 and if not, set it to 0

Like:
#IF (CONTAINS((^) Affected: (%s) sagacity)) {sagacityspell = 1} {sagacityspell = 0}
or
#IF (PATTERN((^) Affected: (%s) sagacity)) {sagacityspell = 1} {sagacityspell = 0}

I guess from what I am seeing though, is that there is no syntax for CONTAINS for pattern matching recognition... just a very basic IF , that has to match or not...

Sorry, I'm used to programming in HTML, Javascript, PHP, .NET... this scripting language is very foreign to me...

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

It does have a pattern matching operator, but you need to actually tell it what you are matching. It does not automatically try to match against the text captured by the trigger--for one thing, #IF can be used in lots of things besides triggers. You need do an operation or a function which evaluates to TRUE or FALSE within the #IF statement:
#IF (@A = "Affected: sagacity") {whatever}
#IF (@A =~ "^Affected:%ssagacity") {whatever}
#IF (%match(@a,"^Affected:%ssagacity")) {whatever}

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

What is this variable "a"?

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

A variable that you need to create and set the value of. I was just using the @A as an example--you could use any variable name, or use %1 or anything else which carries a value that you want to compare. The point is that you need to actually specify what value you are trying to compare. Which means you need to store that value in a variable, or generate it from a function.

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

This is getting very confusing, there has got to be a way to make this work and I have a feeling that I'm getting way off track...

All I want to do is check my Affected By spells, then recast the ones that aren't there, from say a list or something... That way the spells are always on, and if the spell fails during casting, it would do another check, post casting...

So I'm thinking on the lines of (Pseudo):
A list type variable or perhaps a database with a collection of these spells...
Then a trigger, any trigger, to activate the "Affected By" spells script... and at the end of the script run it again until all of the spells are in the "Affected By"

Obviously of course there are going to be obstacles that I'll have to overcome once this part of the script is functioning, e.g.:
Running out of mana and having to sleep... Setting a timer to check to see if my mana is maxed during my sleep, to then wake me up when it is maxed and then call upon the "Affected By" script again...

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

So I've tried more variations of trying to use the %match than I can even count... Here's some of my latest...

This one always sends a false positive...

#IF (%match("Affected: bless","Affected: bless")) {#SEND test}
as well as this one
#IF ("Affected: bless" = "Affected: bless") {#SEND test}

This one I thought would send a 1 if it was positive and a 0 if not, why would I think that? Because the help file said it would... apparently it just always sends a 1, not sure what that is good for...

#VAR armorspell (%match("Affected: armor","Affected: armor"))

Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2011 7:22 pm

This is a crude example that should give you a starting point.

Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2011 7:40 pm

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

As I said, you need to tell Cmud what string you are trying to match.

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Its going to have to be the following line that changes... I'm going to have to figure out how to trim off the spaces from the end of the spell name before I cast them in order for this to work... because when I manually remove the spaces from the spell variables, it then doesn't recognize them when it goes to check them... So it is going to store them with spaces and its going to check them with spaces... so the only way I see around this hiccup is to cast them without the spaces...

#loopdb @spells {#if (%val = 0) {#send cast '%key' self;#wait 1500}}

to something equivalent to this...

#loopdb @spells {#if (%val = 0) {#send cast '%trim(%key)' self;#wait 1500}}

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Ok, adding the %trim fixed the whole spacing issue, the only thing that I'm trying to deal with now, is how to make the script keep running until all of the spells are cast, because sometimes I fail at casting them...

Also, how to exclude certain spells, because some spells are cast on me from other people...

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

To exclude trying to cast spells, that I can't cast, on myself, I tried this bit of code in the trigger...

#if (%trim(%1) != loopdb %trim(@dontcastspells)) {
#addkey spells %trim(%1) 1
}

I added a new database variable called "dontcastspells", which has the spells from the database variable "spells", that I don't want to try to cast on myself... I then removed them from the "spells" database variable... and tried the above trigger, it didn't work... My logic was that it would check to see if the spell that it was seeing was in the dontcastspells variable, if it wasn't then it could continue, if not, then don't add it to the spells variable...

Any ideas?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Ok, so I have read and read and read... and read some more... Here's what I got, it works great for adding a 0 if the spell isn't on and 1 if it is...

#loopdb @spells {#if (%trim(%key) = %trim(%1)) {#addkey spells %trim(%1) 1}}
#loopdb @spells {#if (%trim(%key) != %trim(%1)) {#addkey spells %trim(%1) 0}}

The only problem with this is, is that it adds new spells... after reading through all of the documentation, I could not find any type of command or function that will edit a database variable's key's value, e.g. editkey or editval ... Or another option would be if I could lock the database variable from allowing new entries, but I did not see any way to do that either...

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Simply doing #ADDKEY with the new value will replace the existing value for the key.

Beginner Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 18

Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 3:15 am

That's because updating a variable is simply giving it a new value.
As far as editing, you can store the value into a local value, edit away with various functions like %trim, and then assign the new value.

Functionally speaking there are only three things you can do to a variable, access the value, change the value, or delete it entirely.
The term used to describe the process is irrelevant, there are several ways to do each.

You can test to see if a suspect key exists though:

$key=suspect key string
#IF (%ismember($key, @spells)) {#SAY this key exists already} {#SAY insert code to check if i want to keep this new key, here}

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

As Shalimar said. If you don't want to add new keys under certain circumstances, you need to test for those circumstances before using #ADDKEY.