I7: A problem with "understanding"

[lunasspecto]

The following paragraph of Inform 7 code is crashing my work in progress:

Talking to something is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [something]" as talking to.

Inform 7 gives the following complaint during translation:

Problem. You wrote ‘Understand “talk to [something]” as talking to’ : but ‘understand … as …’ should be followed by a meaning, which might be an action (e.g., ‘understand “take [something]” as taking’), a thing (‘understand “stove” as the oven’) or more generally a value (‘understand “huitante” as 80’), or a named token for use in further grammar (‘understand “near [something]” as “[location phrase]”’). Also, the meaning needs to be precise, so ‘understand “x” as a number’ is not allowed - it does not say which number.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is I’m doing wrong. Any suggestions? I’m using the GNOME interface on Ubuntu 9.10, not that the platform should make a difference…

[vaporware (Tara McGrew)]

Talking to something is an action applying to one visible thing.

That creates an action called “talking to something”, which is legal but not what you want: “something” doesn’t belong as part of the name. You get an error later because the understand statement refers to “talking to”, which is not the full name of the action.

Change the definition to: Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing.

[lunasspecto]

Aah. Thanks, vaporware. I should probably try coding when I’m actually awake.