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Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Are there any echo-like commands left that will not cause pattern-matching triggers to fire? I send informational messages to myself quite often and do not want to accidentally fire one of my triggers.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Not sure why you have triggers that match your information messages, but maybe try using #sayadd for them?

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Currently NO, if you show it on the screen. Then a trigger will fire off of it. The exception is commands that you have sent to the mud.
If you do not have an oninput trigger that matches it then you have bypassed all triggers.

I SUPPOSE that if you created an oninput trigger then set that to noinput you would in effect create what you want.

Another way around this is to set your trigger to NOT trigger on trigger.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

I guess it depends on what kind of information messages you are sending and how you are sending them. If you use sayadd from an anchored trigger, it isn't going to fire the trigger.

Example:

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Thanks for you answers, guys.
I always thought that only text from the #SHOW command can fire off triggers, because it interpreted by CMUD as received from MUD, which is not the case for #SAY/#ECHO. So I didn't use #SHOW in my scripts.

I do not use messages to fire my triggers, only for information, just send them (messages) to a window when a job can't be done with #COLOR or buttons/statuses (various warnings and like, messages from aliases, etc.). That's why I don't like the idea when #SAY/#ECHO cause triggers firing - I have no easy way to put some text on the screen without put myself at risk to fool my own triggers. This just have no sense - there are #ONINPUT trigger and #SHOW command exists if someone want to fire triggers themself. Why add another two commands to this list? What then the difference between #SAY and #SHOW? Default text color? Confused

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

As far as I can tell the difference between #SAY and #SHOW is that #SHOW is treated as an incoming packet. It is put through all the same processing that direct dat would be. #SAY only goes to the screen skipping many of the processing steps.

I would suggest that you do the same thing I do. Make a window named Debug, and then send your informational messages there with the #WINDOW command. I keep mine tabbed behind the main window so it uses the minimum continuous screen space. Since anything I display there indicates a major failure in my scripts it is likely I will be too busy to look at it immediately. The tab for the window will have a nice little icon until I look at it to figure out what went wrong.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Thanks for your suggestion, Vijilante. I thought about this myself too, even have created a new Info window and then take a break for thinking. I already have Debug window for the very same purpose as you, but, unlike debug messages, informational messages can't wait until I review them later and, what is more important, they tied to text that comes from a MUD in the main window. About half of them will be meaningless in a separate window. Thats why sending text to the main screen was a simple solution.

Well, I understand that I have 2 possible ways: 1) continue #ECHOing and #SAYing messages to the screen and hope that carefully designed triggers will not be fooled, and 2) consider a serious script and layout redesign with additional window in mind.

Back to my original post, I was just surprised that CMUD, having so many tricky commands for text processing, does not have a simple command just for putting text to the screen... Eh...

Thanks to everyone once again for your input.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

OK, I suppose I need to give an example of what I meant above.

First you make this trigger.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Sorry, Arminas, you system of 2 triggers will not work. You can suppress user (or #SEND) input echo with #NOINPUT, but you can't suppress #SHOW output, so you will get:
1) echo from #SHOW
2) echo from OnInput trigger

I thought about this possibility myself too and this solution have come first (only 1 trigger used):

Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 4:12 am

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Urm, how does my example not work?

I tested it. It did exactly what you wanted it to do when I tested it. Not fire other triggers.

That being it did not cause other triggers to fire when it was used for saying to the screen.

I gave two triggers only so that you could see how it needed to be used inside of another trigger.
If triggers DID fire off of the text then my example would have been an infinite loop.
If you look at the oninput trigger it is creating a SAY command that does not affect triggers.

The (*) trigger is to show that it is in fact NOT affecting triggers.

If you want to try using the command by itself from the command line type "tsay {This text will not fire a trigger.}" after having created the second trigger.

So please actually try out and think about my example again.

I understand what you are talking about. I thought about it myself a long time ago.
Back in the ZMUD days there was much more difference between SAY and SHOW than there is today, I actually made a few references to it in some posts.
I'm not trying to answer why a command doesn't exist to bypass triggers already I agree that it is a good idea.
Still, my example does do what you asked for...

Edit: Bah, I re-read your post a few times. What the heck to you mean it don't work then you make a command doing basically the same thing???
I'll leave the above for clarity of my thoughts on the matter if nothing else.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

This is a quick answer for Arminas about 2 triggers, I'll get back to this discussion a bit later.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

OK, you STILL do not get the point...

YES if you type #SHOW test into the command line it will show up on the screen twice.... It is supposed to. This is the TEST case for the (*) trigger to prove that there is not an infinite loop.
The #SHOW is showing once, the (*) test trigger is using tsay to echo it once, so you see it TWICE on the screen. It is being echoed exactly once.

The (*) trigger should NOT be used in your real session...

If you want to place stuff onto the screen without it being shown twice or echoed by triggers then you type

tsay {Stuff I want on the screen only once here. triggers will not affect this text.}

So in your triggers or aliases or whatever you would use.
#send {tsay {Stuff I want on the screen only once here. triggers will not affect this text.}}

This is another reason I gave you the test trigger. To show you the syntax needed.

Again, the trigger that you made is virtually identical to the one that I made. So I know you do understand the concept.
Yes I knew that the debugger would show that it had executed a trigger. But your OTHER triggers are all safe from the text.

Yes, I'm going to stop beating the dead mule now.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Sorry, I misunderstood you, Arminas. I thought you want me to use #SHOW with triggers... Embarassed

Using solo OnInput trigger is trivial thing, so I thought about it myself as you did, before even I started this thread. And your reply

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

It is nearly 4 AM here now. So I'm not gonna bother looking up my old posts.

Some stuff though.

#show was placed at the end of the incoming text buffer. This meant that if you echoed on a line of incoming text, your #show was placed at the end of the buffer. Example follows.

#trigger {There are %w killer-bee nests here.} {#show {%ansi(blink)Run away bees will kill you.%ansi(reset)}}

You enter the room and receive a hug buffer of text.

blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
There are two killer-bee nests here.
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
Pretend this is several pages worth of stuff.

With show it would end up at the end of the pages of text.
With say it would be directly under the line that triggered it.

I'll throw in echo here too. Echo did and still does go to whichever window last had activity. But it otherwise is the same as Say.

This is the most striking difference and the one that comes to mind. Besides the text color and the fact that it is not being treated as if it is coming from the mud.
I don't recall am not sure and Ain't gonna test it tonight but, I'm pretty sure I have been able to send myself MXP with Show, never tried it with Say that I can recall but I don't think it will work.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Ok, I'm back for discussion... but apparently there is nothing more to discuss. Wink

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 8:01 pm

I think the suggestion to have a command that displays text without firing triggers is a good one. I think zMUD might have had an option for this, but it was global and not very useful. In the original CMUD rewrite, I had #SAY and #ECHO *not* firing triggers, but that caused too much compatibility problems, so I changed it back to how it was in zMUD.

In general, try to avoid using #SHOW in your scripts. This stuffs the text into the network buffer and treats it as text received from the MUD and can cause potential interference with the real MUD text (such as if there is a packet boundary in an ATCP message from the MUD, or something like that). I use #SHOW a lot for internal testing, but user scripts should really use #SAY/#ECHO instead.

Anyway, I think #PRINT is a useful idea and I'll add that to the wish-list for a future version.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

I just noticed today you had added #PRINT.

I wondered what the speed differences were between echoing text to screen.

The results to loop through, read, and display 3,371 full lines of text line by line.

Method Time
---------------------------------------------

Round 1

#echo 11875 ms
#sayp 11936 ms
#show 11973 ms
#echop 12353 ms
#print 12598 ms
#say 13285 ms
#sayadd 14976 ms

Round 2

#echop 11785 ms
#echo 11868 ms
#say 11883 ms
#sayp 11926 ms
#show 11945 ms
#print 11951 ms
#sayadd 15231 ms

Round 3

#print 11788 ms
#sayp 11890 ms
#show 12292 ms
#echop 12392 ms
#echo 12455 ms
#say 12609 ms
#sayadd 15761 ms

Round 4

#echop 11778 ms
#print 11788 ms
#echo 11842 ms
#say 11879 ms
#sayp 11888 ms
#show 11933 ms
#sayadd 15001 ms

Round 5

#echop 11772 ms
#print 11809 ms
#show 11938 ms
#echo 12200 ms
#say 12623 ms
#sayp 12674 ms
#sayadd 15009 ms

Shouldn't one of these ALWAYS come out on top? I thought using #print would be much faster? Obviously #sayadd always comes out on bottom.