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Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

I'm having trouble with expanding variables. I'm on version 1.34, but I don't see anything in the changelist for 2.x related to this.

The %expand documentation has the following example:
#VAR zuggsoft "Zugg's virtual home."
#VAR email "zugg@zuggsoft"
#SHOW w/o expand: @email

displays (according to the documentation):
w/o expand: zuggZugg's virtual home.

What I actually get is:
w/o expand: zugg@zuggsoft

The documentation continues:
#SHOW with expand: %expand(@email,1)

displays:
with expand: zugg@zuggsoft

This is what I get too. Now, I would expect that %expand(@email) would now produce "Zugg's virtual home". But it doesn't. It gives "zugg@zuggsoft". I've tried all kinds of variations, including %expand(%expand(@email)), but I cannot get the inner variable to expand.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 4:56 pm

I should update the help file for this.

The difference is that you have "" quotes in your #VAR line, which makes CMUD treat the result as a literal string, which does not expand further.

If you change it to use {} instead of "", then it will be stored as an "expandable" string. So, this would work:

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:00 pm

Hmm, no, I was wrong. When you use the {} then the @zuggsoft is expanded right away by the #VAR command. So that's not right either. Looks like there is a bug in %expand. I'll take a look at it.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:09 pm

This is because CMUD's parser is now smarter. It understands that when you surround something with quotes, it's a string. Since the literal string "zugg@zuggsoft" is stored in the variable, that's the literal string that's displayed by default.

To get the zuggZugg's virtual home result, use %eval(@email) instead, which will evaluate the string inside @email.

I'm not sure if this is just a documentation problem between zMUD and CMUD or if there's a problem with %expand - I couldn't get it to work using %expand(@email,2) or anything, so it seems like a bug. Not that %expand sees much use since %eval works just as well, anyway.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Zugg Sad

Still, use %eval for now.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Hm. Yes, I see. It is smarter now about what is a literal, which should not be expanded. But that basically means that %expand is useless. It can only ever do a single level of expansion. But %eval does work. I'll put that into my code. Thanks!

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

I spoke too soon. It doesn't quite work. It gives: zuggZugg'svirtualhome, removing the spaces

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:39 pm

I think that problem's been fixed by 2.05.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Oh good! My scripts have run into enough problems solved in 2.05 that it's time for me to try it. Thanks!

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:08 pm

You might wait until 2.06 is released on Friday. It solves the serious trigger problems in 2.05.