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Beginner Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 18

An example of how I dealing with expanding variables at the moment:

given:
#VA TypicalVariable "a typical variable."

Case 1).
Display to issue window without sending to MUD:
#SAY This is how I deal with @TypicalVariable

Case 2).
Display to top window without sending to MUD:
#ECHO This is how I deal with @TypicalVariable

Case 3).
No display, but send to MUD:
#SEND %expand(This is how I deal with @TypicalVariable)

Case 4).
Display and send to MUD:
This is how I deal with @TypicalVariable

Now here are my thoughts on this:
case 3). I use this quite a lot to suppress output but it is quite awkward to use.
I have been looking for something like a #SENDX (expanded send or #SX) so the syntax is identical to case 1 & 2. Any ideas?

case 4). I know this is the "default" send to MUD command issue, but it looks horrid surrounded by code with every other command beginning with a hash character.
If there was a command like a #DSEND (expand, display and send or #DS), it would certainly make my scripts look a bit nicer.
Also it would give the option of some nice colour formatting for the local echo. ie: #DS %ansi(blue)look
I haven't figured out where the local echo gets sent to either (top or issuing window) or how to redirect it.

PS: How about a #REM command? I was using the ; character for comments but they got mangled too often by the compiler, so I stopped commenting my scripts, eeek.
I don't know if the #NOOP would suffice for this, the help file was a bit brief on the matter of it's usage.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Have you tried putting curly brackets around your text? That should treat it as a string but still expand your variable, and it should work the same for all the commands you're trying.

Beginner Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 18

- The curly braces work a treat thanks, have cleaned up my #SEND's nicely.
Also I found the bit about paramerter expansion in the "changes for zmud users/#VAR" section of the help which I guess holds true everywhere, not just in the #VAR command.
So I should only use the %expand() function when I need to control the expansion depth right?

- I guess I can fake local echo colours by:
#SA {%ansi(blue)This is how I deal with @TypicalVariable}
#SE {This is how I deal with @TypicalVariable}

Little bit messy, but at least functional.

Wizard Joined: 15 Jan 2002 Posts: 1644 Location: USA

Beginner Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 18

That works brilliantly!
Parameter expansion and colours, exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks everyone.

Beginner Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 18

Having a closer look at the "Repeating Commands" help I had a thought, would:

#0 {This is a comment i put in my script}

be ok for a remark statement?

Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 5:21 am

#noop would probably be easier than that. Noop stands for No Operation, which is pretty self-explanatory :)

Theoretically that could work, but I don't think it was intended to work with 0 - it seems to be sending the command twice when I test it now.

Personally, I don't use comments all that often - I tend to have my scripts separated into quite small chunks and I can easily keep comments in the "Notes" part of the settings GUI.

EDIT: Which does actually raise a question in my mind. There's no command-line syntax for the notes field, but are they still preserved over an XML export?

Beginner Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 18

Yes the #NOOP looks superior (fewer lines) when looking at the compiled code, probably execute a bit faster.

Notes are nice, but sometimes you just want to put a line in saying "I am doing this here".

Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 6:08 am

Yeah... My only issue with #noop really is that it doesn't stand out with syntax highlighting like real comments do. If I am going to use a comment, I want to be able to find it again easily :P

Wizard Joined: 15 Jan 2002 Posts: 1644 Location: USA

Use // for comments it works great as far as I can tell

Beginner Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 18

I hear that, I'll have to settle for #NOOP {"comments"} , at least there is some markup.

Mind you after changing my script to all #SA / #SE / #1 / #NOOP so that now every line starts with a # the syntax highlighter has really settled down for me. Now all it is messing up is highlighting the curly braces in nested #IF statements.

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 3:27 pm

Actually, instead of #1 you should be able to just do this:

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 4:15 pm

I'd had some trouble with addings comments with // making things stop compiling, but I can't reproduce it now. Probably me getting something wrong.

I've taken to using the notes field now, which suits me fine.

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 5:57 pm

I'd rather that you continued to use the // comments and then reported whatever problems you had with it so that I can fix any bugs.