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Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

Hey guys, it's been awhile!

Haven't had much time to dink around with my CMUD settings as of late, so I've just used what I had. But I recently got a request to make a script that I'd been intending to make for some time, but hadn't gotten around to. And that would be a "Clan Highlighter" script. Much of the script is already worked out in my head as a general plan. However, I'm trying to determine what the best storage method would be. Currently, I'm looking for a storage method that can easily store multiple, associated entries. Here's an example of what I'd like to store:

Name: Chamenas Clan: Shalonesti Level: 51 Rank: Sha'falas Leader: 0
...

Those need to be associated, and I need to be able to reference them as an association with functions so that when, in a specific situation, Chamenas' name comes up, I can either highlight his name in accordance with his clan, and/or show the other pertinent information related to him.

My initial thoughts were that a database variable would be my best bet? But I know next to nothing about them. I managed to find a list of Commands and Function in association with databases, but I was unable to find any tutorials or guides on how to set them up or, most importantly, whether or not they can store an index of records with multiple associations.

Any help in this matter would be appreciated.

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

How many people are you wanting to recordize? If it's really small, you can get away with using a single datarecord (@clanned_players) that uses the character name (@clanned_players.Chamenas) as the key field and stores the other data as the value. The value can be a stringlist (Shalonesti|51|Sha'falas|0) with the data in a specific order, or it can be a string like your example above (Clan: Shalonesti Level: 51 Rank: Sha'falas Leader: 0)--either way, because of how datarecords are stored internally it won't be so easy to directly refer to it.

The trick to all of that is to assign the value to a local or otherwise non-datarecord variable. So assigned, you're no longer constrained by any limitations of datarecord variables. Thus, if you choose to make the value a stringlist you can simply assign it to a local variable and then directly work on that stringlist using stringlist commands and functions:

Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

Yeah, I'm not actually planning on using sub for the output! In any case, the code will automatically update entries from the who list. And we're easily talking over a hundred, possibly over two hundred entries. And since it will all be updated automatically, I won't be referencing anything in the code directly by name. Like I said though, I have a vague idea of how I want to run it, and I may run into problems with various parts later, but, right now, my biggest issue is finding the proper method of storage.

A stringlist has occurred to me as far as the individual records. However, the big thing is that I don't intend to make a new stringlist variable for each entry, so I'm sort of hoping that there is something (database variables?) which will allow me to have one variable which can store the hundred of records, and have each record be a stringlist which will contain all of the relevant information.

Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

By the way, is it possible to access stringlist records by number? If for some reason the database variables do not work as I had hoped, I could simply use multiple stringlists.

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 2:06 pm

%item works for that.