[I7] having a room called "storage" causes compiler halt

[peterorme]

I came across something which I boiled down to the fact that this:

the storage is a room.

quuxing something is an activity. 

rule for quuxing the storage:
	do nothing;

causes that:

Problem. An internal error has occurred: compiled a generic specification. The current sentence is ‘rule for peeking at the storage’ ; the error was detected at line 90 of “Chapter 16/Compiling from Specifications.w”. This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

It seems that this something to do with me naming the room “storage”. If I rename it to something else the error goes away.

Is this something I should report as a bug over at the bug tracker you think?

[Felix_Larsson]

Yes, do.

Action rules like Instead of examining the storage: or Instead of singing in the storage: won’t compile either (whereas »Instead of examining when the noun is the storage» and »Instead of singing when in the storage» does compile) – but they give another error message:

Problem. You wrote ‘Instead of singing in the storage’ , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is ‘singing in the storage’. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

[Felix_Larsson]

The Standard Rules turn out to use “storage” for the type (or kind or whatever) of variables, property values, etc. (It is used in phrase definitions like ‘To increase (S- storage) by (w - value):’.)

Possibly, therefore, Inform should handle »The Storage is a room» the same way it handles »The Object is a room»—with this kind of error message:

Problem. The sentence ‘The Storage is a room’ seems to be telling me that two descriptions, one a form of storage and the other of room, are the same. That’s a little puzzling - like saying that ‘An open door is a container.’