[DGD] Second auto and kfuns

[Mikael Lind]

Quoting Noah Lee Gibbs from 00:59, 2002-02-10:

> I know you can, with the Kernel MUDLib, define a "second AUTO" by saying
> "inherit AUTO" in the /include/std.h file.  I originally saw it as
> "#include AUTO", but I'm assuming that inheritance will do a similar
> trick.

You would not want to put any inherit statements in /include/std.h,
as this is included by code in /kernel and ~System. Instead, the
inherit statement should be found in the object-specific include file
specified by your object manager, through the path_special() hook.

> Either way, I'm curious whether you're allowed to have a second AUTO that
> modifies or overrides functions from the first AUTO.  Obviously nomask
> functions can't be touched, but could you add simple "find_object" and
> "destruct_object" commands that allow objects to be found with a new kind
> of string specifier, for instance?

You are indeed allowed to override functions in your System-level
auto object. I assume that this was one of the main purposes of
introducing support for object-specific include files.

> I haven't had any luck doing this the obvious way and just adding a
> find_object call in the second AUTO, but I might just be messing something
> up...  I'm also testing it currently using regular inheritance, and I
> don't know if inheritance of the path_special is somehow -- well --
> special :-)

Have you made sure that you are actually inheriting the System-level
auto object? It should not make a difference whether you are
inheriting it implicitly or explicitly.

> Also, if a program explicitly does an "inherit AUTO", will that be seen
> and handled by path_special in the objectd?  If not, I guess you could
> still do security by just making sure to forbid_inherit() people doing
> that illegally...

No, inheritance never results in a call to path_special(). See
path_include() in /kernel/sys/driver.c for details.

// Mikael / Elemel

--
I wished for 4 uncursed scrolls of gold detection
and all I got was this lousy .signature

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