I7: Confused about relations

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’ve read through the documentation and I believe this should work:

The starting point is a room.

A flang is a kind of object.

Quarblence relates a person to a flang.

The verb to quarble (it quarbles, they quarble) implies the quarblence relation.

The bork is a flang.

Sir Nonsense is a person in the starting point.

Sir Nonsense quarbles the bork.

Instead of touching Sir Nonsense:
	let X be the flang to which Sir Nonsense relates by the quarblence relation;
	say "'My flang, old bean: [X]'.".

The player is in the starting point.

But when I try:

touch sir nonsense

I get:

[** Programming error: object#45 (object number 45) has no property p56_quarblence to read **]
“My flang, old bean: nothing”.

Can anyone tell me how to retrieve the related object? What have I done wrong? I’m assuming there’s something wrong with this syntax:

let X be the flang to which Sir Nonsense relates by the quarblence relation;

But I can’t see it. :frowning:

Thanks in advance!

2

I don’t have Inform at hand right now, so I can’t test anything, but I would have suspected this to make a problem

Whether or not it solves the current issue, you probably should use

Quarblence relates one person to one flang.

Also, try the debug command SHOW RELATION QUARBLENCE RELATION to see what quarbles what in your game.

3

You’re running into a known bug (inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=1113): the phrase “the X to which Y relates by the R relation” gets its arguments wrong.

I don’t know how to work around this, I’m afraid.

4

For some purposes at least, you might get by with something like:

[code]The verb to be quarbled by implies the reversed quarblence relation.

Instead of touching Sir Nonsense:
let X be a random flang quarbled by Sir Nonsense;
say “‘My flang, old bean: [X]’.”.
[/code]

5

Thanks, Zarf. Damn, I seem to be running into a few of these lately. It’s not so much of a bother, as I think I can just use a property for my 1:1 relationship, e.g. A person has a flang called the quarbler. And then let X be the quarbler of Sir Nonsense. If I do end up needing a relationship, I will use your great suggestion, Felix.

I also have a many-to-many relationship that I list out and I’ve read that the bug affects those relationships similarly, but I understand if I make them all the same kind (a super-kind or kind-interface), I should be alright with that. I’ll give it a go and report back if I have any trouble. Thanks again, helpful people!