Article #1048
Subject: Property referencing
Author: Gavin Lambert
Posted: 3/1/2001 04:24:06 PM

I've discovered that I want to refer to "subobjects" a lot; for
example, I want to use "$local.ship" in place of "#123",
"$local.ship.help" in place of "#125", etc.

I've changed $code_utils:parse_propref to the following, which
seems to do the trick... can anyone see any nasty side-effects
that I haven't thought of?

----- snip -----
"$code_utils:parse_propref(string)";
"Parses string as a MOO-code property reference, returning
{object-string, prop-name-string} for a successful parse and false
otherwise.  It always returns the right object-string to pass to,
for example, this-room:match_object.";
"";
"Extended to call $string_utils:literal_object on everything
before the last dot; one of the main reasons for that is so that
subcore refs work (e.g. $coreobj.oneprop.anotherprop).  As a side
effect it will also translate ~player and *mailing-list
references, but doesn't allow extensions for those (or for #xxxx
refs).";
s = args[1];
if (dot = rindex(s, "."))
   object = s[1..dot - 1];
   prop = s[dot + 1..$];
   if (!(object && prop))
     return 0;
   elseif (valid(lit = $string_utils:literal_object(object)))
     object = tostr(lit);
   else
     "Restore original behaviour for non-literal objects.";
     dot = index(s, ".");
     object = s[1..dot - 1];
     prop = s[dot + 1..$];
   endif
elseif (index(s, "$") == 1)
   object = "#0";
   prop = s[2..$];
else
   return 0;
endif
return {object, prop};
----- snip -----

If nobody can pick any holes in this, then I'll have to make
similar changes to :parse_verbref; are there any other verbs that
will need to be changed?

--
Gavin Lambert, Ultra Enterprises, uecasm@nospam
<http://ue.cjb.net/>, <http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~brianc/>
ICQ: 2274180  (<www.icq.com>)
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----
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