[I7] 'Whether all includes' puzzle.

[J_J_Guest]

That’s bizarre, jrb. Could the barrel have somehow been renamed with the player’s command, ie “take all”?

I haven’t had time to work on this problem since the weekend, but thanks for all your suggestions. I think I’ll approach it by addressing the unhelpful message. I’ll let you know how I get on.

J. J. Guest

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

@jrb

My suggestion above doesn’t work. There are two major problems with it. The first is the “[barrel]” token is matched by “all”. So any attempt to TAKE ALL when nothing is available will set off the rule, even if the barrel is not present.

The other problem may be an Inform bug. This code

Testing Suite is a room. The barrel is a scenery container in Testing Suite.

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the nothing to do error:
	if the player's command includes "[the barrel]":
		say "You'll have to search it."

gives a runtime error:

TAKE ALL

*** Run-time problem P13: Tried to abandon an activity which wasn’t going on.

I don’t know what the problem is here. Removing the “if the player’s command includes…” condition eliminates the problem, but I don’t see why testing that condition should cause an error.

Edit: extra weirdness:

TAKE ALL,
barrel: That’s hardly portable.

TAKE ALL

*** Run-time problem P13: Tried to abandon an activity which wasn’t going on.

TAKE ALL,
You can’t talk to the barrel.

For what it’s worth, the Run-time problem error messages for abandoning an activity and ending an activity seem to be flipped, so that’s probably supposed to be a message that tells you you’re ending an activity that isn’t going on. Which is hardly less mysterious.

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

So with rules on, we get this:

take all
[Rule “exclude scenery from take all rule” applies.]
[Rule “exclude people from take all rule” applies.]
[Rule “Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the nothing to do error” applies.]
[Rule “exclude scenery from take all rule” applies.]

*** Run-time problem P13: Tried to abandon an activity which wasn’t going on

This makes it seem like it’s parsing the command and coming up with nothing because everything is excluded from TAKE ALL; then, since figuring out whether the player’s command includes “[the barrel]” requires running the parsing routine again (I think), it has to run the deciding whether all includes rules again while printing the parser error. And here, somehow, the deciding whether all includes activity maybe isn’t getting started properly, so when Inform hits the “it does not” in the “exclude scenery from take all” it thinks that the activity is being ended without having been started? I don’t know what’s going on in the internals at all.

ETA: reported as a bug.
EDIT 2: Fixed the link to the bug report.

[jrb]

Thanks.