[MUD-Dev] string parsing

[coder at ibm.net]

On 12/11/97 at 08:14 AM, cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA (Chris Gray)
said: >[JC:]

>:Okay, lets reduce this to a diagram:
>:
>:
>:		   Far side of the street
>:   ----------------------<wall>------------------------------------
>:
>:			 <Boffo>
>:
>:		 HHHHHHHHHH WWWWWWWWWWW
>:	<Bubba>  H horses H WW wagon WW  <Bluto>
>:		 HHHHHHHHHH WWWWWWWWWWW
>:
>:			  <you> 

>Boy, do I feel dumb - I truly hadn't noticed the second meaning of
>'behind' here, and only clicked on it while reading your reply. I guess
>I'd better not take a side job as a parser for a MUD!

Don't worry, I'm still trying to figure out a system that will handle
multiple recursion of prepositional spaces.  Consider the worse case of a
man sitting backwards on a horse which it standing sideways on a wagon
which is parked facing the rear of a barge which is coming from the rear
of a much larger vessel, which is in turn at the front of a fleet of such
vessels.  Now drop the proverbial Bubba in there and get the text right.

A lot of it appears to be able to be handled be looking for other objects
of comparable and larger (within a scoping) magnitude within a reasonable
distance.  Thus you refer to a man as being in front of a wall, despite
the fact that he is also on the far side of a small pebble.  However, the
same man is not in front of a massive mountain on the horizon, but is at
the head of the wagon on the road, as that is the next available suitably
sized relational object...

This revents placing the flea on the horse's nose in the first example as
relative to the fleet.  The next ranged comparable object is the horse.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...