[602] in Coldmud discussion meeting

Re: clear_parameter()

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sun Nov 27 15:52:59 1994 )

Date: Sun, 27 Nov 1994 13:50:23 -0700
From: 869683 Gillespie Brandon James <brandon@avon.declab.usu.edu>
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU, deforest@netcom.com

< My reason aginst: I don't see a need, the cost is the work of adding it plus
< the possibility of adding it in a way which causes more bugs or something.

I was under the impression you had actually done some work with a database.
At least from my experience I know it is a royal bitch when doing major object
overhauling/moving around, because you inevitably end up creating new parents
with different parameters, destroying the old and leaving dead parameters
throughout the entire database which can only be removed if you manually
edit a textdump.  I consider this a hole, and I highly doubt you can come
up with a satisfactory db implementation.  For instance, assuming an object
heirarchy similar to the Cold Dark's (in relation to $user), $user has a
parent of $random_information, which defines the parameters ,information and
,random.  $random_information stays around for a while, but you decide that
it is useless, there is approximately ~100 descendants of $user, if you
destroy $random_information then there are 100 descendants which have a
parameter by the name of ,information which probably even has a value, but
which is completely dead wasted space because _NOTHING_ can access it or
remove it other than offline.

< P.S. If you want this change so bad, make it and post the patch.

Through Richelieu's urgings I have been trying to work as a group, however
I am more and more thinking that most people here do not wish to work as a
group.  Simply making a change which half the involved people would not like
is NOT working as a group, is this such a hard concept to grasp??

-Brandon

(BTW, the db implementation I heard you talking about before was to clone
each effected object to remove the parameters, although this would work it
would definitely be a major bitch when you get ~100 descendants, or even