Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: neilg@fraser.sfu.ca (Neil K. Guy)
Subject: Re: Extremely odd TADS bug
Message-ID: <neilg.760480187@sfu.ca>
Sender: news@sfu.ca (seymour news)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
References: <2iv1fa$rhu@bigboote.WPI.EDU>
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 1994 20:29:47 GMT
Lines: 23

 (code deleted)

 What you've experienced is *not* a bug. It's supposed to do exactly
what you did.

 There are two kinds of strings in TADS. There are double-quoted
strings (eg: "hello") and single-quoted strings (eg: 'oink'). The
former are printed on the screen immediately as they're evaluated,
even if you're using them in an assignment operator. The latter are
not. Check page 21 of the TADS manual. This is done as text adventures
display oodles of text and it gets tedious quickly to have to say
"printf "blah blah blah";" or whatever all the time.

 Thus, code that reads xxx := "fnar"; will print the word "fnar" on
the screen. Replace your double-quoted strings with single-quoted
strings and your code should work just fine.

 Don't be quick to assume there's a bug if your code doesn't work.
Sometimes it's because of a bug, but often I find it's because I've
coded something incorrectly.

 - Neil K.

