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GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

What's the current state of looping variable syntax?

There was a thread discussing IF and WHILE using the new function %exp that lets you get at the current block's argument stack:
http://forums.zuggsoft.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=24449&highlight=forall

My comments are the FORALL version of Asira's post in that thread.

The new feature doesn't seem to apply to FORALL loops (which, granted, don't have parentheses but could benefit from similar treatment):
#var list "a|b|c"
#var count 0
#forall @list {
#echo %exp(0);
}

as an alias gives a series of blank lines.

The %i syntax gives results that could be a bit confusing to new users. Define one alias named "test5":
#var list "a|b|c"
#var count 0
#forall @list {
#echo %i;
}

One would expect it to output a series of lines saying "a", "b", "c" (it does).

Define another alias named "test6":
#var list2 "q|w|e"
#FORALL @list2 {
#echo %i;
test5;
}

Calling test6 outputs the series of lines "q","q","q","q","w","w","w","w","e","e","e","e"

Is this intentional behavior? (acting almost as if test5 had been expanded inline instead of being a separate namespace)

Changing the %i in test5 to %j gives the expected result of "q","a","b","c","w","a","b",...

Tarn

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 4:59 pm

The loop variables work as they do in zMUD (or should). %i always refers to the outermost loop, %j the next inner loop, etc. Doesn't matter how they are nested, or even if they are nested indirectly like you showed. Yes, it can be confusing, but it's a compatibility issue.

It's possible I will improve this with some sort of local variable solution like I did with %exp, but since we are getting closer to a public release, I don't want to make anymore parser changes right now.