Look in not the same as examine?

[kalignos]

These are the lines that are messing me up:

A thing is usually undescribed.

Instead of examining an open container(called holder):
say “Inside [the holder] you see [the list of things in the holder].”.

I wanted to make it so that it didn’t show all of the stuff in the room in the description so I did the undescribed thing. Then I wanted it to show stuff when you examined an open container, so I put in the second part from above.

BUT, you can “examine” and it works fine, you can “look at” and it works fine, but if you “look in” you get the container is empty. Why?

[Erik_Temple]

Looking inside a container is implemented as the searching action. From the Index entry:

Searching something (requires light) (past tense searched)
Searching looks at the contents of an open or transparent container, or at the items on top of a supporter. These are often mentioned in room descriptions already, and then the action is unnecessary, but that wouldn’t be true for something like a kitchen cupboard which is scenery - mentioned in passing in a room description, but not made a fuss of. Searching such a cupboard would then, by listing its contents, give the player more information than the ordinary room description shows.

The usual check rules restrict searching to containers and supporters: so the Standard Rules do not allow the searching of people, for instance. But it is easy to add instead rules (‘Instead of searching Dr Watson: …’) or even a new carry out rule (‘Check searching someone (called the suspect): …’) to extend the way searching normally works.

Typed commands leading to this action

“look inside/in/into/through [something]”
“search [something]”

A better way to handle what you’re trying to do might be to redirect examining to the searching action, e.g.

Instead of examining an open container (called the holder):
try searching the holder instead.

–Erik

[kalignos]

Right idea, but backwards. The examining works. The searching is where it reads everything as empty because everything is undescribed. It fixed my issue. Thank you.