Stupid Question

Posted by Duma on Fri 06 Apr 2007 01:01 AM — 6 posts, 20,001 views.

Duma USA Fri 06 Apr 2007 01:01 AM #0

Ok, I know this is a stupid question and the answer might be buried in the help files, but here it goes.

How do I refer to a variable in the input screen? I don't want to have to make an alias for it, but I want to be able to just type sdk @t with t being my target.

I've tried to simply sdk @t but it takes the "@t" literally and inputs sdk @t instead of say, sdk rat. Any help would be appreciated.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Fri 06 Apr 2007 03:05 AM #1

There is no provision for expanding generic @variable in the command line. It was intended for use in aliases.

However you could make a generic alias that does it for you. For example, if you are planning to type:

<some_command> @<some_variable>

... then this would work (Lua scripting):


<aliases>
  <alias
   match="^(\w+) @(\w+)$"
   enabled="y"
   regexp="y"
   send_to="12"
   sequence="100"
  >
  <send>
do
  local target = GetVariable ("%2")
  Send ("%1 " .. (target or ("@%2")))
end -- do
  </send>
  </alias>
</aliases>

That looks up the variable and sends the replacement.

Shaun Biggs USA Fri 06 Apr 2007 05:59 AM #2

Just be careful when using this script. The mud I play on uses @ for colour codes. So @g is dark green, @G is bright green, etc. You might want to have a way to disable or escape that if you're using a variable. If you're accessing variables with @foo like zmud, you might want to have it escape with a tilde as well. The alias would be:


<aliases>
  <alias
   match="^^(\w+) (?<!~)@(\w+)$"
   enabled="y"
   regexp="y"
   send_to="12"
   sequence="100"
  >
  <send>
do
  local target = GetVariable ("%2")
  Send ("%1 " .. (target or ("@%2")))
end -- do
  </send>
  </alias>
</aliases>

This will protect you from having @crush match the variable "crush" when you meant to colour rush dark cyan. You would use ~@crush instead. Might never come up, but you wouldn't want to have your script do something wacky when you don't want it to.

Shaun Biggs USA Fri 06 Apr 2007 09:33 PM #3

I was thinking about this a bit, and I redid the alias. Here's the result.


<aliases>
  <alias
   match="^(.*) (?<!~)@(\w+)(\W.*)$"
   enabled="y"
   regexp="y"
   send_to="12"
   sequence="100"
  >
  <send>
do
  local target = GetVariable ("%2")
  Send ("%1 " .. (target or ("@%2")) .. "%3")
end -- do
</send>
  </alias>
</aliases>

That will let you have the variable pretty much anywhere on the line that you want it. However, I can't find a way to get multiple variables on one line. Is there a repeat on same line function for aliases like there is for triggers? If not, would it be better to have a somewhat recursive function called? Or just have a Lua script parsing the whole line?

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Fri 06 Apr 2007 11:35 PM #4

A more general solution, which you may or may not want, depending on how aggressively you want @variable to be replaced, would be to let a Lua string.gsub find and replace every occurrence of @name into its corresponding variable. This would do it:


<aliases>
  <alias
   match=".*@.*"
   enabled="y"
   regexp="y"
   send_to="12"
   sequence="100"
  >
  <send>
Send ((string.gsub ("%0", "@([%a%d_]+)", 
      function (s)
        return GetVariable (s) or ("@" .. s) 
      end)))
</send>
  </alias>
</aliases>

Shaun Biggs USA Sat 07 Apr 2007 06:19 AM #5

That's what I was referring to when I mentioned having Lua parse the whole line. I just wanted to know if there was a better way to do that.