Re: Please answer the News question

• Date: Fri, 8 Sep 1995 12:14:55 PDT
• From:
  Roger Crew <rfc@microsoft.com>

>  >        @addnews (anything) to $news
>  >
>  >where anything is really # of message on *news. Nevertheless on my 
meeting moo
>  >I have to issue the command as:
>  >
>  >        @addnews [# of message] to #61
>  >
>
>  Yes, you have to use the object number here.  Something about the examine
>   verbs on $news must be returning it's name as "$news".
>
>  >$news on my moo is #61. Using *news doesn't work either. Is it supposed to
>  >work with $news (or, perhaps *news) and I have something set up wrong?
>
>  To use the *news syntax, you have to move the $news object to 
$mail_agent, like
>   so:
>
>  @move $news to $mail_agent
>
>  then commands like the following:
>
>  >>5) If a message is old and you want it removed, do: @rmnews [# of
>  >>message] from *news
>
>  will work

actually, no.  The problem is that @addnews, in the 10/94 LambdaCore, is
a -x verb and thus, unlike most of the other mail verbs (@read, @mail, ...),
relies on the builtin parser to match on the $news object.  Recall that the
builtin parser knows nothing about matching on $foo or *Foo.  That this
actually works for some +x verbs is because the :huh code
(see $command_utils:do_huh) checks for such matches.  This is basically
a big horrible kluge that's supposed to go away the moment we can write
an in-db parser (which in turn waits on having an exception-handling version
of the server and other things).

If you really want to be able to do `@addnews ... to $news', you'll 
need to make
that verb +x and change the permissions checks so that they take care of the
case where someone tries to call this verb from a program (i.e., other from the
huh code).  I believe this has been done in the current LambdaMOO code.

If you're feeling more adventurous, various people have played with
utilities to allow wizard code to call -x verbs.  Introducing this into
the :huh code would mean that $foo/*Foo/~Foo matching would work on all
-x verbs.

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