[DGD] Search and replace with parse_string?

[Krister Svanlund]

I've just started playing with DGD again after quite some time away
from text-based games and thought I would do som actual coding this
time.

Just to get a feel for LPC i decided to write a small module to add
color and escape-sequences to strings, since I like a colorful
terminal window :)

My basic idea is that if a string such as "Hello %RED!%World%RESET%!!"
is sent to a user the %RED!% part will be replaced with \x1b[1;31m and
the %RESET% part with \x1b[0m. I have gotten it to (kind of) work a
few times but it's always with severe limitations, such as % being
unusable in the string. I solved this by doing what I would have done
in C and looped over the text and calling a function on each
color-string (such as RED!). This being my current version I'm
attempting to parse those strings with parse_string.

My idea is to have a grammer something like this:

mod = /[!_]/ /* ! becomes bold, !! becomes highcolor bold etc. */
move = /[\^v<>]/ /* different kinds of cursor movements, also used as
function arguments for clear and such */
word = /[a-zA-Z]+/
count = /[0-9]+/
mods : mod mods /* each mod can be followed by several other mods */
mods : mod
color : word ? colorify /* a color can either be a simple color name
or a color name followed by a modifier */
color : word mods ? colorify
movement : move ? movify /* a movement can be specified with a number
otherwise it defaults to one */
movement : count move ? movify
func : word ? funcify
func : word move ? funcify
func : word count move ? funcify /* this should be used for clear...
and maybe something else */

This does not seems to work. At best I get a nil back no matter what
(correct) text i feed it. If anyone can help me, either with a grammar
that handles it all or just a grammer for the color-specification it
would be really cool.

I'm running DGD 1.4.3 and Kernel mudlib 1.3.3 and all this on linux.