Zugg Software :: View topic - Bumping This Colon Issue into here as a bug with #PICK So Zugg Sees For Sure ;)

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

We talked about it here, and Tech discovered it isn't just zMUD but also CMUD, and I've verified that it is true in 1.34, 2.13, and 2.14a.

http://forums.zuggsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29045

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:40 am

Unfortunately this won't get fixed anytime soon. The problem is deep in the routine that does the parsing for the #PICK command, and it's even a harder problem in CMUD because this colon syntax interferes with the Window: syntax and is already kludged in the CMUD parser. You might bump it again next year, but I'm not going to make these kind of big changes that might have all sorts of weird side effects this close to the public release.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

Roger, Wilco.

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:04 am

Because I'm probably going to forget this by next year, I thought I'd post an idea I had while reading this thread:

#pick command-list label-list

command-list is a stringlist of commands to sent when an option's chosen. label-list is an optional list of labels that're displayed in the list instead of commands. If an element of the list is blank, the command's displayed instead. For example:

#pick {hello|dance|goodbye} {Greet|""|Bluh}

or

#pick {hello|goodbye|dance} {Greet|Bluh}

I mention this mainly because it eliminates the kludgy #pick syntax. I think this is one of those cases where breaking backwards-compatability is warranted. The #pick syntax has always been horrible.

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:25 am

Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been thinking. Or, it might be possible to use the current database variable syntax, like:

#pick {Greet=hello|goodbye|Bluh=dance}

where the "key" field (before the =) is the caption. This would integrate nicely with database variable support and is something the current CMUD parser already knows how to handle.

But yeah...a discussion for a future month ;)