This is sort of trivial, because there are many ways around the problem, but it’s weird all the same.
The following code won’t compile, though as far as I know, it should:
A corridor is a kind of room. The printed name of a corridor is usually "dim hallway".
Hallway1 is a corridor. It is north of Lab and east of a corridor called Hallway2.
I expected it to do just what the code describes - Create a room called Lab, place a corridor room called Hallway1 north of it, and a corridor room called Hallway2 west of that. Instead, Inform throws a kind error, saying that it can’t do this nonsense because I haven’t told it what a corridor is.
Have I overestimated the allowed uses of ‘called’, or is this not supposed to happen.
As said above, rephrasing this fixes it, so it’s not super important. I just would have liked tidier code, and was surprised when I couldn’t get it this time.
My guess is that the compiler doesn’t like getting too complicated with “called” statements. If you break it up like this it compiles and does what you want:
A corridor is a kind of room. The printed name of a corridor is usually "dim hallway".
Hallway1 is a corridor. It is east of a corridor called Hallway2. It is north of Lab.
And if you do this…
A corridor is a kind of room. The printed name of a corridor is usually "dim hallway".
Hallway1 is a corridor. It is east of a corridor called Hallway2 and north of Lab.
… it creates another hallway called “Hallway2 and north of Lab.” So I think part of it may be that using “called” in compound sentences is unreliable, even though your case probably should be unambiguous! [EDITED last word]
Thanks for the possible rephrasing, I forgot to add one up there.
Yeah, it gets unreliable quicker than I imagined. The documentation gave me the sense that call was very much at my beck, aside of course for that small warning about not using call twice in a sentence.
curious here, why do you say this is ambiguous? Probably just writer’s brain and programmer’s brain not communicating, but I can’t see it. The only thing I could think of was the it in “it is north of the lab…”, but that can only be referring to Hallway1, because it’s the only thing that has been mentioned thus far.