[Ohrrpgce] Improvement to plotstrings

[James Paige]

I kinda like ?"" because it is inexplicable ;)

But I am also quite happy with @""



On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 3:50 AM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 4 March 2018 at 00:49, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3 March 2018 at 17:07, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This sounds good to me.
>>>
>>> I think I like ?"literal" best. Its short, and although every option has
>>> the potential to be confusing, I feel like that is the least confusing. If
>>> some day years from now I am helping somebody debug a script that mixes
>>> old-style plotstrings and plotstring literals with new real strings and
>>> string expansion codes, I feel like ?"" will be easier to tell apart at a
>>> glance from $"" than the other options thus far.
>>>
>>
>> But the use of ? is inexplicable.
>> I considered @"literal" earlier and discarded it, but on second thoughts
>> it could be a good choice. @ produces the ID of a script or global
>> variable, and here it would be the ID of a string literal. What I didn't
>> like at first is that I want to extend @scriptname to return a callable
>> function object, not just a script ID, like so:
>>   subscript, squareof, x (...)
>>   func := @squareof
>>   show value(func(10))
>> However, @globalname would still return an ID, and in all three cases @
>> is returning a handle (to a constant object, even)
>>
> Err, actually if you use it on a subscript you get a closure, not a
> constant.
>
>
>> so I guess it's not a false commonality. They are three different things,
>> so @ isn't single operator, but maybe it's better to use the same syntax
>> for similar semantics than invent a unique syntax in each case.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> ==Informationless introduction==
>>>>
>>>> Currently, the animation system uses strings for animation and variant
>>>> names, and I'm thinking of using names for other things as well:  handle
>>>> points ("hand", "handle", "stand") and sequence points ("attack", "hit").
>>>> I'm not 100% decided, but I think it would probably be best to use
>>>> strings in scripts as well rather than ID numbers (like slice lookup codes)
>>>> since that requires name editors, new lumps, enums for special names,
>>>> id->string tables for those enums, plotscr.hsd constants, hsi export code,
>>>> and maybe another script like misc/sl_lookup.py to keep it all in sync.
>>>> Which is a lot more complexity than just using strings!
>>>>
>>>> So you would write something like
>>>>   play animation(sl, $0="walk")
>>>>
>>>> Also, I was looking through my code for Carcere Vicis, which uses a
>>>> preprocessor to spit out HamsterSpeak code, which let me write stuff like:
>>>>    say($"as you drink the", item, $"your whole body starts to tingle")
>>>> (This expands to $NS="as you drink the", etc, where NS is a 'new
>>>> string' script)
>>>> Just making it easy to write string constants solves one of the biggest
>>>> problem with plotstrings.
>>>>
>>>> ==Proposals==
>>>>
>>>> I think we should add special syntax which is like $...="..." but
>>>> doesn't require manually specifying a string ID:
>>>> -it returns the ID number for a special immutable string, which can be
>>>> passed to other string commands
>>>> -the engine assigns a string ID >= 100, so that it doesn't clash with
>>>> manually allocated string IDs. It searches existing strings >= 100 for one
>>>> with the desired value, and otherwise increases the number of strings,
>>>> creating a new one. Strings are not garbage collected. No GC is not a
>>>> problem, because you can't create more strings than exist in your script
>>>> source code
>>>> -the string can't be modified, as that would break other uses of the
>>>> same ID. Passing to any script command doing so is an error.
>>>> -strings >= 100 are saved in saves, just like other strings
>>>> -the actual ID assigned to a particular string constant varies between
>>>> different plays, but you will never hardcode an ID >= 100 into your scripts
>>>> -maybe it shouldn't be displayable with showstringat, etc. This isn't
>>>> necessary, but the intention is to use these as literals, not full-blown
>>>> plotstrings. Maybe we should just allow all that, though?
>>>>
>>>> Call these plotstring literals. This is a temporary solution until we
>>>> have real string literals; they will become obsolete.
>>>> Therefore we can't just use "..." syntax; they're very different.
>>>>
>>>> As I mentioned before, I want to have a way to expand embed codes in
>>>> strings immediately, and allow you to use names of local variables too. The
>>>> syntax I'm leaning towards is to prefix the string with $, like
>>>>   msg := $"${hp}"
>>>> It's not the easiest to type, but the relationship to $-prefixed embed
>>>> codes seems good. But there are many other options, like python 3's
>>>> f"${hp}". Any other suggestions?
>>>>
>>>> If we're using $"..." for that, then it can't be used for plotstring
>>>> literals.
>>>>
>>>> We could use something like $="..." or $?"..." or $$"..." to indicate
>>>> the similarity to $...="...". But the close similarity of these to $"..."
>>>> seems confusing.
>>>> So maybe something different, like ?"...".
>>>>
>>>> Also, we should add $== as a shorthand for stringcompare. stringcompare
>>>> is horribly verbose.
>>>> Also, if hspeak sees you write something like
>>>>   if(str == $?="")
>>>> then it can throw an error and tell you to use $== instead. Note that
>>>> comparing two plotstring literals with == will work, but comparing a
>>>> plotscripting literal to a mutable plotstring won't!
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
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>>
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