Zugg Software :: View topic - Thoughts on an age-old problem.

Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 7:53 am

I'd never really bothered to look at multistate triggers really in-depth until today, when I wrote the help file for them. People often say they want to be able to trigger on messages like:

Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:35 am

So both the "one of your eyes" and "Your poor nose" lines are tested when you use the reparse option? How exactly does that reparse option operate?

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

The reparse actually tests immediately upon becoming the active state. In other words all of the reparse states must be tested, any that match will have thier scripts executed, and then it would go back to the original state.

I don't actually like that setup, and it was testing some thoughts about it that led to my most recent bug reports. The first thing I don't like is that once one of the reparse states matches you still have to check the rest. This is what caused me to find the problem with using #STATE to reset it.

The second thing I don't like is that you can't adjust the priority of states above the original triggers priority. Bascially after the first state you are in a position where you expect one of a select few lines. You want those expectations to be tested before anything else. That is the whole point of priorities, but the current system with states does not permit that. Perhaps if it did I would change my mind on it.

Third would be a required addition to CMud's handling of reparse states. I did a quick test and found that a reparse state will match even if the previous state has the Stop flag set. I believe that that the usage of this flag should cover all triggers on that line, meaning all reparse states after the STOP should be skipped. This addition would also really cover my first problem with it.

Otherwise I do like the design. I would suggest using %match or %regex in a script to do the same thing; but since I know some of the underlying code, and studied some tests of it I can say that reparse is a better way to go.

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

Why bother with a reparse? A simple pattern state should work, and keeping track of one state is going to be a whole lot easier.

#condition {(*)} {#switch (%1 = "option1") {stuff}}

If you don't need to worry about illusions or otherwise faked messages, you might even be able to do the {@stringlist} pattern to make the match more limited.

Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 4:45 am

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

How many reparse states can you have? Lets say you have 10 different messages that could happen. Would it be a problem or slow things down?

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:18 am

As many as you like. Whether or not this method would suit you depends on exactly what you're doing as well as your preferences, though - you might find this method not so great for large numbers of messages if you're going to need to add all 10 of those messages to a whole bunch of triggers. But you might also find that perferable to, say, a #switch.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Well I figured as much and Vijilante said something about the underlying code and that this method would be faster. I actually like it and use it a lot.