Zugg Software :: View topic

Beginner Joined: 16 Jul 2002 Posts: 27

I have the following alias script named say that will alternate the text you say in different colors. The mud used { as an escape charecter for the ascii, rather than & in the help files.

#VAR out ""
#VAR Scheme "Wx"
#VAR Count 0
#WHILE ( %len( %-1)>=@Count) {
#VAR out %concat( @out, "{")
#VAR out %concat( @out, %copy( @Scheme, %mod( @Count, %len( @Scheme))+1, 1))
#VAR out %concat( @out, %copy( %-1, @Count+1, 1))
#ADD Count 1
}
' @out~{x
#VAR out ""

The problem is when I place a comma in the text of the say command it will spam out. For example if I enter the following

say blah,

It sends to the mud the following:
' {Wb{xbl{Wbla{xblah{Wblah{x

It should send:
' {Wb{xl{Wa{xh{W{x,{x

Any ideas why the comma would throw off my message?

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

You need to put quotes around the %-1.

MASTER Joined: 28 Nov 2000 Posts: 4817 Location: USA

The comma is a special character which is used as a delimiter in functions, such as %copy. When you have a comma inside your text, %copy treats it as a special character leading to the problem you describe. Specifically, the final #VAR line becomes (replacing %-1 with blah,)
#VAR out %concat( @out, %copy( blah,, @Count+1, 1))
As you can see, this leaves the second parameter (starting character) of %copy blank, uses @Count+1 for the third parameter (length) instead of 1, and has the 1 as an undefined (and ignored) fourth parameter. This is why you need to surround %-1 with quotes as Vijilante said.

LightBulb
Senior Member