©2000 Parity@OGR. You may copy and redistribute this document provided that it remains
complete, with credits intact, and is used only for non-profit purposes.*
*****
Parity begins logging. "If anyone does not want to appear in the log, let me
know now, and I'll edit you out before I turn it over to OGR staff."
Gorgo has no problem with that.
Parity bangs its gavel on the podium and calls the class to order. "First I want
to get a feel for how 'beginning' we are. Does everyone know what an object, an
attribute, and a lock are, or should we start there?"
Parity means, also, really know what they are, not just have heard the terms. ;)
Gorgo does.
Parity is pretty sure Roswind does too. "Okee. So, to make sure everyone is
clear, here, there are, essentially, two kinds of attributes. System attributes
which have special meanings, and user attributes, which are just storage space.
'desc' is a system attribute, and 'my-blue-ball-gown-desc' is a user attribute."
Roswind says "Okay. When you say desc, you mean @desc and not the &various descs
for the @desc, yes?"
You say "We probably all already knew that, but it's important because we're
going to play with some system attributes. If everyone can type 'help
commands2', you'll see a list of all the system attributes. Everything on the
commands2 page is just a command to set an attribute, not a 'real' command like
@emit and such.""

Help available for MUSH Commands (continued):

@aahear @aclone @aconnect @adescribe @adfail @adisconnect
@adrop @aefail @aenter @afail @agfail @ahear
@akill @aleave @alfail @alias @amhear @amove
@apay @arfail @asuccess @atfail @atport @aufail
@ause @away @charges @conformat @cost @describe
@dfail @drop @ealias @efail @enter @exitformat
@fail @filter @forwardlist @gfail @idesc @idle
@infilter @inprefix @kill @lalias @leave @lfail
@listen @move @odescribe @odfail @odrop @oefail
@oenter @ofail @ogfail @okill @oleave @olfail
@omove @opay @orfail @osuccess @otfail @otport
@oufail @ouse @oxenter @oxleave @oxtport @pay
@prefix @reject @rfail @runout @sex @startup
@success @tfail @tport @ufail @use

Parity nods to Roswind.
You say "@desc, or &desc... it doesn't matter."
You say "The system attributes all have a 'command' (starting with an '@') to
set the attribute, but the trick is... it's just an attribute."
You say "So, you can '&desc me=A fine figure of a bit' and it'll set your desc.
Or you can '@desc me=A fine figure of a bit' and then exa me/desc and you'll see
an attributee with a description in it."
Roswind nods
Gorgo nods.
You say "Then, my-red-dress-desc is just an attribute too... but it doesn't have
special meaning, so if you set '&my-red-dress-desc me=A fine figure in a red
dress.' people won't see the dress when they look at you, but exa
me/my-red-dress-desc will show you the value of 'my-red-dress-desc' as an
attribute on you."
You say "So. To get things rolling, I want everyone to pick a simple noun, and
we're each going to make an object to work with."
You say "I am going to make a ball, for example, with '@create Rubber Ball'; I
take it everyone has made an object before now?"
Rubber Ball created as object #1039
You say "Once you've created your object, Do, '@lock/uselock <object>=me' and
'@set <object>=commands' (where you replace <object> with the name of your
object.)"
Roswind nods. "Got it."
Gorgo nods.
You say "Now, back to system attributes; There's bunches and bunches of them,
and most of them work the same way. Type in '@drop <object>=You drop <object>'
and '@odrop object=drops <object>' ... or some more complex message if you like,
where @drop is what you'll see and @odrop is what everyone else sees."
You say "Once you've done that, drop your object."
You drop the ball, which bounces a few times before coming to a rest.
Gorgo drops the chewtoy, making it SQUEAK as it hits the floor.
Parity grins. "You might already have known about the drop attributes, but I
wanted to make a point... MUSHcode has system attributes for all kinds of
events. Always check help commands2 before coding some complex thing that can be
made simple by just setting the right attribute.
Parity checks if Roswind is with us still?
Parity hmmms, and hopes she'll catch up. "Anyway. If you've done any building,
the system attributes are all just like the ones that you use when building.
Message for the actor, message for everyone else, message for actor on failure,
message everyone else on failure. Make sense?
Roswind :pats the dragon's shoulder and moves away from it.
Gorgo nods.
You say "Roswind, the ':' is unnecessary in @o___ attributes like @odrop."
Roswind says "Fixed. And I understand. Force of habit. :)"
Parity nods.
You say "Okay, so odrop is kinda boring, though it'd be nice if everyone that
made object toys set some of the basic get/drop/give messages, because otherwise
people only see '<object> has arrived' and '<object> has left' and don't know
who acted on the object."
Gorgo says "Yah."
You say "However, there's another set of attributes, the @a___ attributes, which
are the action the object performs when something happens, like @adrop when you
drop an object. THat's starting to look like actually -coding-, and not just
building-with-objects. ;)"
Taken.
Chewtoy has left.
Parity picks up its ball, and sets, '@adrop ball=@wait 10=@emit The rubber ball
rolls across the floor.'
You drop the ball, which bounces a few times before coming to a rest.
The rubber ball rolls across the floor.
You say "The @wait command, in its simple form, just waits a certain number of
seconds before doing something."
Gorgo drops the chewtoy, making it SQUEAK as it hits the floor.
Dragon has left.
The chewtoy starts to decompose.
You say "@wait can also be used with 'semaphores', which are generally used to
make sure some piece of code is only running once, but we won't get into
semaphores today except to say that they exist and not to be confused that help
@wait has a bunch of stuff besides seconds listed in it."
Roswind pats the dragon's shoulder and moves away from it.
The big inflated dragon starts drifting across the room.
Roswind decides not to even look at it right now. ;)
Parity grins. "help is a good thing. Really. :)"
You say "Okay. So we have an object. It can do things when we drop it, and if we
wanted we could repeat that for get and give and being looked at, and all sorts
of things."
You say "Instead, we're going to assume that we want the object to do something
else, when we want it to, by issuing a command."
You say "To make a command is really very simple; You just use a $ and a : in an
attribute. '$<command name>:<action>' ... Like, '&bounce-ball-cmd ball=$bounce
ball:@emit %N bounces the rubber ball.'"
Parity bounces the rubber ball.
You say "Easy enough?"
Chewtoy is kicked across the room in a nice arc. Wheeeee!
Gorgo says "Gotcha."
You say "Does everyone understand the % substitutions?"
Gorgo does.
Roswind grabs the dragons tail and pulls it back.
Roswind nods. "Yes"
You say "'kay."
You say "Now, what I just showed you is the wrong way to do an emitting command.
Or at least, the sloppy way."
You say "We can put more than one action into a command, and then, @pemit will
emit to one specific player, and @oemit will emit to everyone -except- that
player."
You say "&bounce-ball-cmd ball=$bounce ball:@pemit %#=You bounce the rubber
ball. ; @oemit %#=%N bounces the rubber ball."
You bounce the rubber ball.
You say "It looks the same to you, of course, but not to me, and it's much nicer
to have commands act that way; people expect it, because of the way exits and
such work."
Roswind nods.
Gorgo nod.s
You say "Note that I use %# for the emit commands; %# uses the players dbref; %n
will work, and beginning coders often use it, but it will break as soon as there
is an object with a similar name in the room... You've all seen the 'I don't
know which one you mean!' message, I'm sure, when you have an object like
'Parity's Car' around?"
Gorgo says "Yah."
Parity nods.
Roswind understands.
You say "Are you all familiar with functions?"
Roswind says "Such as"
You say "time(), loc(), iter() ..."
Gorgo is familliar with some of them. I know the basics behind them.
You say "Functions are pieces of softcode, that when evaluated, are replaced
with some string; like the % substitutions, except more general."
You say "(This is no longer strictly true with the introduction of 'side-effect
functions' but we'll pretend it's true for now.)"
Roswind nods. "Yes, the time(), loc(), name(), owner() ... those are the ownly
ones I know.
You say "Okee."
You say "If you type 'say time()' you should see yourself saying the current
mush-time. ("time will not work.)"
You say "Sun Aug 20 14:05:16 2000"
Gorgo says "Sun Aug 20 14:05:32 2000"
Roswind says "Sun Aug 20 14:06:04 2000"
You say "Now if you try 'say lwho()' you should get a list of dbrefs."
Roswind says "#-1"
Roswind says "#552 #1038 #384"
Roswind says "I see them"
Parity nods.
You say "Now if you say num(parity), you should see my dbref... which is one of
the ones in the lwho() list. lwho() is a list of who's online."
Roswind says "#384"
Roswind nods
Parity nods. "And of course, name(#384) would give my name, ... but name(#552
#1038 #384) won't give much of anything."
You say "This is where 'iter' comes in."
You say "iter() does some function evaluation repeatedly for different values."
You say "If you say iter(1 2 3,##), it's the same as saying '1 2 3' ; if you say
'iter(1 2 3,Number ##)' the same as saying 'Number 1 Number 2 Number 3'"
You say "'Number' of course, is a boring thing to evaluate, because it's just a
string, it's not a function."
You say "But, 'iter(1 2 3,add(##,1))' will add 1 to each element, so it's the
same as saying '2 3 4'."
You say "Is this making sense?"
Roswind nods. "Actually it is." :)
You say "Okee. Now, the first part of iter can be a function, too. Try 'say
lnum(3)' for example. This will give you a list of numbers."
Gorgo says "Why the ##? What are their function in the string?"
0 1 2
Gorgo says "0 1 2"
You say "The first argument to iter is a list of elements separated by a space."
You say "The second argument of iter is a string that gets evaluated like any
other string in mush, with the special exception that '##' is replaced by each
element of the first argument in turn."
Roswind says "0 1 2 3 4"
You say "So, when I 'say iter(1 2 3,##)' iter (which is short for 'iterate' by
the by) will evaluate ## as '1' and then as '2' and then as '3', take each of
those results and stuff them together in one long string."
Gorgo hmms. ok
You say "Okay. So. 'iter(lnum(3),## ...)' will go through 0, 1, and 2 and put '
...' after each number. Everybody try iterating an lnum (of a -small- number,
please!) with some other text added around the ##."
Gorgo says "0 Feh 1 Feh 2 Feh"
Parity hopes it makes sense now that you've tried a concrete example?
Roswind says "0 thousand 1 thousand 2 thousand"
Roswind nods. "Yeppers"
You say "Cool. Now, you've probably noticed that lnum starts with 0..."
Gorgo nods.
You say "One thing we often want is to start with 1. Easy enough. Whatever our
code is, we just replace '##' with 'add(##,1)'."
You say "Like, 'iter(lnum(3),add(##,1))'"
You say "1 2 3"
You say "Time to mention a tricky part of evaluations; this is not just for
iter, but for any time your code is evaluating a string, from just when you're
saying some line of code to the most complicated command you've ever written."
You say "When mush evaluates, if the first thing it sees is not a function, it
'decides' that what you're saying is just text. That's why I can 'say For
example, iter(), ' and not get an error."
You say "For example, iter()"
You say "#-1 FUNCTION (ITER) EXPECTS BETWEEN 2 AND 4 ARGUMENTS"
You say "If I start with 'say iter()' I get a really obnoxious error message.
;o"
Gorgo says "Yah. Whoever made those, were really offensive. :)"
You say "Now. If I -want- my iter to run, so I can do, 'For example, iter(1 2
3,##) shows you iter(1 2 3,##)' and get '...shows you 1 2 3', I just wrap my
function in [] square brackets."
You say "The [] square brackets tell the mush, '-this- part is not plain text.'"
You say "If I say, 'For example, iter(1 2 3,##) shows you [iter(1 2 3)]', I
get..."
You say "For example, iter(1 2 3,##) shows you #-1 FUNCTION (ITER) EXPECTS
BETWEEN 2 AND 4 ARGUMENTS"
You say "Err."
You say "If I say, 'For example, iter(1 2 3,##) shows you [iter(1 2 3,##)]', I
get..."
You say "For example, iter(1 2 3,##) shows you 1 2 3"
Parity notes that it helps to write your code correctly. ;)
Gorgo grins. Yeah. Typoes in code = hours of extra work. :)
Roswind grins and nods.
You say "Now, for us this matters, because when we do 'iter(1 2 3,Number
add(##,1))' mush is going to see 'Number' ... which isn't a function... and
decide the whole thing is text; it'll still do ## and % substitutions, but it
won't evaluate functions."
You say "Number add(1,1) Number add(2,1) Number add(3,1)"
You say "So, I put in some [] square brackets, and use 'iter(1 2 3,Number
[add(##,1)])'"
You say "Number [add(1,1)] Number [add(2,1)] Number [add(3,1)]"
You say "Number 2 Number 3 Number 4"
Parity notes that it has been allowing you to see the square brackets by putting
a % in front of the square brackets, which just like % in front of a % stops the
mush from evaluating it specially.
You say "Of course it makes me look silly when I forget to remove the % before
running the code. ;o"
Gorgo grins.
You say "Anyway, to bring it back around to our original problem,"
You say "We wanted someting like, 'say iter(lnum(3),Number [add(##,1)])"
You say "Number 1 Number 2 Number 3"
Parity invites everybody to try their lnum example again with an add() in it.
Roswind says "Number 1 Number 2 Number 3 Number 4"
Gorgo says "Number 1 Number 2 Number 3 Number 4 Number 5"
You say "Okee."
You say "Now that we all understand how functions work, and how iter works... we
can try something almost useful."
You say "Try, 'say iter(lwho(),name(##))'"
Gorgo says "Gorgo Roswind Parity"
You say "If you look at the WHO list, you'll see an uncanny similarity to what
you just said. ;)"
Player Name On For Idle Doing
Gorgo 01:12 3m Formerly Capricorn
Roswind 02:07 4m
Parity 2d 02:18 0s CodeClass: 2PM EST
3 Players logged in.
Gorgo nods.
You say "If we were writing a +who command, we'd want it to appear on separate
lines. This comes up a lot."
Roswind says "Gorgo Roswind Parity"
You say "We'll want to switch to @pemit now, so the 'You say' text isn't
confusing the issue. Try, '@pemit me=iter(lwho(),name(##)
'"
You say "Err."
You say "Try, '@pemit me=iter(lwho(),name(##)
)'"
You say "Try, '@pemit me=iter(lwho(),name(##)%r)'"
Gorgo says "Gorgo
Roswind
Parity
"
Parity finally escapes everything and includes -all- the () parentheses.
Gorgo
Roswind
Parity

Gorgo mumbles and is fighting with a new clietn.
Parity nods.
Gorgo says "Gorgo
Roswind
Parity
"
You say "Let me know when you've tried it with @pemit; assuming your client
doesn't pretty it up for you, you should find that you see 'Gorgo' at the
beginning of the line, and 'Roswind' and 'Parity' are each indented one space."
Gorgo nods.
You say "This is because, by default, iter() puts a space -between- each entry."
You say "That's why our lnum() examples didn't run together as '012345'"
You say "But when doing a +who type command it's frustrating."
You say "There's two ways around it. 1) Use TinyMUSH 3.0 or PennMUSH which each
allows a 'null' separator. or 2) Write our iter differently."
You say "Since the space appears between entries, by putting our '%r' at the
-beginning- of the entry, the extra spaces appear at the end of the line where
they don't hurt anything."
You say "Now, try: @pemit me=iter(lwho(),%r[name(##)])"

Gorgo
Roswind
Parity
Parity can't see what you're doing with @pemit, so please let it know when
you're caught up.
Roswind says "Got it. Why are they in that order? Time connected?"
Parity nods to Roswind. "Yes."
You say "SInce that's the default order that MUSH puts the lwho() in, that's why
almost every +who puts people in that order."
You say "Try, @pemit me=iter(sort(lwho()),%r[name(##)])"

Parity
Gorgo
Roswind
You say "sort(), when given a list of dbrefs, will sort them in numerical
order."
You say "Try saying lwho() and sort(lwho()) if you're not clear on what's going
on with this."
Parity is a big advocater of experimenting to learn. :)
Roswind says "That's the only way I do learn. Reading the mush manual does
nothing for me. As long as someone can explain in plain english, and I fiddle
with it, I'll learn. :)"
Parity nods, "Yes, I don't feel that I really understand something until I've
had some 'hands on' experience.
Gorgo nods.
You say "Okay. Now, to tie everything back together, let's try an exercise. Take
what I've explained about commands and about functions, and make a 'mywho'
command on your object that will tell you who's online. Please set your object
visual with @set <object>=visual ; that will let me see the attributes you're
working on."
Gorgo says "Tadah."

CMD.MYWHO:$mywho:@pemit %#=%r*** Gorgo's Private WHO
***%r[iter(sort(lwho()),%r[name(##)])]%r%r*** Gorgo's Private WHO ***

Parity nods. "If everyone can look at Gorgo's mywho with 'exa chewtoy/cmd.mywho'
...."
You say "One of the little nuisances of that preceding %r is that it gives us a
leading, extra return that we don't -really- want. When we bracket our who list,
we can take care of that easily."
You say "If we do something like, '@pemit
me=-Header-[iter(lwho(),%r[name(##)])]%r-Footer-' everything lines up nice and
snug. (In Gorgo's case, that means just removing the '%r' at the end of her
header line.)"
-Header-
Gorgo
Roswind
Parity
-Footer-
Roswind says "Got it... finally"
You say "This is, I think, the real reason that +who lists and the like are
always bracketed by border designs... to hide the extra %r :)"
LWHO:$lwho:@pemit me=iter(sort(lwho()),%r[name(##)])
DWHO:$dwho:@pemit %#=%rYour private who
list%r[iter(sort(lwho()),%r[name(##)])]%r
Parity nods, "Looks good, Roswind! :)"
You say "So does yours, Gorgo. ;) I just got distracted giving more tips. ;o"
Parity whews.
You say "Anyway."
You say "That's 2 hours, and you've learned how to write your own +who command.
So, let me just close by saying that you'll find more math functions like add()
under 'help math functions' and more useful information-source functions in
places like 'help database functions' and 'help misc functions'."
Parity opens the floor to questions.
Roswind raises a hand. "When's the next class?" and ducks. ;)
Parity grins. "In two weeks, probably?"
Gorgo says "Sounds good. :)"
Parity may move the day if lots of people can't make this time.
You say "Personally, I thought sunday afternoon was a nice lazy do-nothing time
for a code-class..."
Parity obviously doesn't want to have it friday or saturday evening. ;)
Gorgo says "People are usually very hard to plan for."
You say "Oh, a comment about naming conventions."
You say "I like to name my attributes 'blah-cmd', 'blah-fn', 'blah-data' etc."
You say "Gorgo apparently prefers 'cmd.blah' 'fn.blah' etc."
You say "Either way is fine, but you do want -some- prefix or suffix, so you can
quickly exa your object with '*' and find particular groups of attributes. Just
be consistent, and you'll be fine."
Parity discourages people from using '_' though.
You say "_ requires a shift-key to type, which makes typos more frequent, and is
harder on the wrists of people that are constantly typing attribute names. '.'
and '-' are both good separators."
Parity thinks that's all for today, then, and will close the log unless there's
any more questions.
Gorgo doesn't have more. Thanks for your time. :)
Roswind says "Nope. None now. Thanks. :)"
You say "Thank you!"