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Rahab
Wizard
Joined: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 2320
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 Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 1:40 pm
Fun with stringlist unions
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I have discovered an interesting trick that I thought I would share. You can create a varfunc which is the union of two or more stringlists.
| Code: |
#var alpha {a|b|c}
#var beta {x|y|z}
#varfunc alphabeta {%concat(@alpha,"|",@beta)}
#show @alphabeta
#show y is at %ismember(y,@alphabeta)
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This is actually pretty obvious when you think about it, but I found it to be a really cool way to work with sets of lists that I sometimes want to work with separately, and sometimes together. Such as: @armor, @clothing, @weapons, and @allitems. You can't modify the items in the union directly, of course, but it works in triggers and other times when you don't want to modify the list. |
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Fang Xianfu
GURU
Joined: 26 Jan 2004
Posts: 5155
Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 1:58 pm
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And, of course, you can't sort it or anything like that. But it has its uses, I agree. Nice one.
In a trigger, btw, you should be able to just do {@var1|@var2}. |
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Larkin
Wizard
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 1113
Location: USA
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Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 4:22 pm
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You may run into problems with empty string lists, and you might want to account for duplicates, too, depending on your usage of the resulting string list.
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Anaristos
Sorcerer
Joined: 17 Jul 2007
Posts: 821
Location: California
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Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:42 pm
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When faced with similar situations, I take the extra step to convert both stringlists to string, then concatenating them with the separator I used to convert them to string, then replacing said separator with the stringlist separator. This avoids the problems mentioned by Larkin concerning empty lists.
So:
| Code: |
alpha = "a|b|c"
beta = "x|y|z"
alpha = %expandlist(@alpha," ")
beta = %expandlist(@beta," ")
alphabeta = %sort(%replace(%concat(@alpha," ",@beta)," ","|"))
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Or:
| Code: |
alpha = "a|b|c"
beta = "x|y|z"
alpha = %replace(@alpha,"|"," ")
beta = %replace(@beta,"|"," ")
alphabeta = %sort(%replace(%concat(%trim(@alpha)," ",%trim(@beta))," ","|"))
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The separator I use here is a blank, but one must choose one that doesn't collide with the data.
EDIT: Thanks, Larkin. Code fixed! |
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_________________
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Last edited by Anaristos on Fri May 16, 2008 10:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Larkin
Wizard
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 1113
Location: USA
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Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 1:50 pm
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Well, if you used a separator other than a blank space, you could do the %trim trick. (Missed a % on the one replace function call, too.) But, yes, I was suggesting extra checks and/or function calls might be in order.
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