Re: ALAN - '$INCLUDE'


23 Aug 1995 21:46:03 -0700

... so then Mark "Mark" Sachs said ...
>> Could someone explain to me how the $INCLUDE directive is supposed
>> to work in ALAN? The docs. are superbrief on this, with no examples,
>> and I can't get it to work.

> Real simple. Let me just crack open the source code for the endlessly
> delayed, half-mythical "A Day in the Life..."

Which is? Would this be a text adv. in ALAN?

Thanks for the reply re: $include. More on that later, but first ...
thanks also for the 'etudes' available in the archive. Any examples are
of help when you're new to both the language, and IF coding in general.
Nice to see FLOYD FROM PLANETFALL again too. (capitalized for the person
asking about the same thing in Inform.)

> Okay. Basically, just do this --

> $include 'filename'

Yep, works fine. My only problem, I believe, was the buggy Amiga
version of 2.5(1). ThoNi has kindly sent me a fixed version which works
flawlessly so far.

> i.e. you can't define a whole batch of objects and then $include a file
> full of synonym definitions,

But you could (define + synonym + syntax) different verbs in different
files, as long as all the necessary definitions for a particular verb are
in the same file, right?

> and you can't create a bunch of little
> files (each with their own verbs, synonyms, locations, objects, etc.)
> and have a master file $include them all one after another.

As I write this, I can't see why not (aside from problems of
complexity), since a single .alan file can have all these things
distributed throughout, in no particular order.

Dennis Carlyle - dgcarlyl@freenet.vancover.bc.ca

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