[DGD] String handling

[Stephen Schmidt]

On Sat, 15 Feb 2003, Maarten Goudsmit wrote:
> Thanks for all the good replies. My opinion on the subject is that as
> long as you don't use the snippets you "borrowed" commercially, everyone
> is free to use them. The MUD community, after all, completely relies on
> open source for its inspiration.

My opinion is much the same - however, in any conflict between
opinion and law, law usually wins  ;)

My understanding of the law on these matters, at least in the
United States, is this. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and what
follows should not be construed as legal advice.) The author
of code has complete control over the use, alteration, and
redistribution of that code. The author may grant rights to
do some or all of those things to some people and may choose
not to grant them to other people. He/she can also attach terms
and conditions to the use, modification, and redistribution of
that code if he/she chooses to do so. In the absence of an
explicit statement of the author's intent to give you the
right to use, alter, or redistribute code, the law is that
you do -NOT- have the right to do so. The MUD community's
tradition of treating code as freely usable and modifiable
would not hold up in a (US) court of law if an author sought
to restrict use of his/her code.

My recommendation is that anyone posting code to this group,
or distributing it otherwise, include an explicit statement
as to whether use, modification, and redistribution are
permitted, and under what conditions. In general I would
recommend granting rights to freely use and modify for
non-commercial purposes, but not to redistribute without
permission from the author, that being what the community
seems to expect to be the standard. I try to adhere to this
recommendation personally, though I don't always succeed. It
would be good if the community would adopt that as standard
practice, IMH, non-expert, non-professional, O.

> Now, to my question: is there a good tutorial somewhere for string
> handling?

Can't help with that one, unfortunately. The TMI-2 mudlib had some
useful documentation for sscanf (which it may have gotten from the
MudOS driver) but I don't know if it's compatible with the DGD
implementation or not. I do know that MudOS sscanf and C sscanf
are rather different and what works in one does not work in the
other. Thus, you probably need a document specific to the exact
environment you're working in.

Steve/Moby


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