[MUD-Dev] string parsing

[Felix A. Croes]

coder at ibm.net wrote:
>[...]
> >If the mud has such object relations as `next to', `on top of' etc, then
> >it makes sense to have syntax rules, and functions to give them meaning,
> >for all of them.
>
> My support for prepositions is currently, err, inelegant and flakey.  I've
> not examined the area in depth, but when I do re-approach it I will want
> the system to be able to analyse the locations of multiple objects and
> determine the applicable prepositions which apply to their positions ("The
> ball and the light are above the table.")  As such the base idea I have
> stashed is to operate off a tuple which defines the class of preposition
> (ie list of terms), and the spatial transformation which defines its
> scope.  This (hopefully) reduces prepositions to a generic form which can
> be both parsed and back-constructed.

I think the difficulty in recognizing such object relations stems from
trying to do everything with a single positional system.

Proposed solution:

Start with a hierarchical container system at its most abstract.  Let
each object have a "position" in its container.  The interpretation of
the position is left to the container.  The position can be a pair of
coordinates meaningful in the plane defined by the room, or a triplet
of coordinates in the 3-D space defined by the room, or
(angle, distance, speed) relative to the room, which is the planet in
whose gravitational field the object resides.

The position could then simply be a string like "inside", "beside" and
"above" to indicate the position relative to the container, without
imposing the same system on the rest of the mud.

Felix Croes