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Issue L61123     [previous patch]

Minor problem with parse_name
Submitted by: Martin Oehm     Appeared in: Library 6/11 or before     Fixed in: -
Problem

I think I have found a (rather minor) error with the parse_name routine. On page 209, the DM4 states:

"It [parse_name] should return:
  0  if the text didn't make any sense at all,
  k  if k words in a row of the text seem to refer to the object, or
  -1 to tell the parser it doesn't want to decide after all.

The word marker wn can be left anywhere afterwards."

But the word marker's position is not reset after returning -1 as it should. In TryGivenObject (parserm.h), the local variable j is used to keep track of the start of parsing with parse_name and is only used to recalculate wn after a match. In my opinion, a line should be inserted here after line 4032:

  4004     if (obj.parse_name ~= 0) {
  4005         parser_action = NULL; j=wn;
  4006         k = RunRoutines(obj, parse_name);

  ...              ! ... handle parse_name result

  4029             MakeMatch(obj, k);
  4030             return k;
  4031         }
  4032         if (k == 0) jump NoWordsMatch;
  >>>>         wn = j;
  4033     }

This might not be an issue -- none of the parse_names in the DM4 exercises that return -1 move the word marker, and usually, as in Zarf's parse_name variants, all the parsing is done in parse_name and the return value is zero.

But in my case I have read a word with NextWord() which I want to process further. The routine looks a bit like that:

  parse_name [;
      if (NextWord() == 'schild') {
          ! handle special case
          if (CheckArticle(male)) return 1;
          return 0;
      }               ! wn has moved by 1
      return -1;      ! look at the unambigous synonyms
                      ! given in the name property
  ], ...

Here, CheckArticle is a way of checking whether an article was used and if so, assure that it matches a certain gender. If there is no article or a correct one, match. If there's an article but it doesn't match the gender, fail. In all other cases, look at the other synonyms*. Of course I could move the word marker back by one, but wouldn't it be more consistent to reset wn after returning -1 anyway?

________
*  As a brief explanation: "Schild" as a male noun means shield, as a neuter noun it means sign, so if the player refers to "das Schild" I don't want the disambiguation question to come up, since using the correct article, the object is already uniquely described.

Solution

As described above.


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