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From: ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Christopher E. Forman)
Subject: Re: Parsers: Too much of a good thing?
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Message-ID: <1995Nov7.144147.140750@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 1995 14:41:47 GMT
References: <1995Nov6.190546.5974@freenet.victoria.bc.ca> <47mct4$q8m@cnn.Prince
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Tim Hollebeek (tim@franck.Princeton.EDU) wrote:
: I disagree!!!  I went back and played Adventure after playing Zork,
: and was suprised how many things cannot be done with <verb noun>.
: Many of the puzzles in adventure have wierd syntax to get around
: this problem.
: For example, condense: 'put coin in slot' to two words.  Sure, 'insert
: coin' works, but it isn't the first thing I think of, and it rarely
: gives good error messages since it isn't obvious to the game what you
: are trying to do ...

How true.  Typically, you can't kill something without specifying what to
use as a weapon.  You can't insert something without telling the game where
you want to put it.  Heck, in games with multiple locked doors, you can't
even unlock a door without answering which key you want to use.

While resolution of ambiguity did exist with many early two-word parsers:

  > UNLOCK DOOR
  "With what?"
  > WITH KEY

Of course, with a primitive parser, a player never knows if the "with" is
expected, or if the game will simply accept "key."  Also, what if there is
more than one key?  A lot of two-word parsers didn't even recognize
adjectives.


--
C.E. Forman                                      ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
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