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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] implicit vs explicit short_name?
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Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 15:11:15 GMT
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Neil Bowers (neilb@canon.co.uk) wrote:
> If you have an object declared thusly:
>
> 	Object foo "foo bar";
>
> then an attempt to set foo.short_name will cause a run-time error,
> because short_name has not been explicitly declared. So the object
> should be declared:
>
> 	Object foo
> 	    with
> 		short_name "foobar";
>
> Is there any overhead to declaring an object this way, if you're not
> going to mess with foo.short_name?

I don't have my spec handy, but I don't think the overhead would be large.
A couple of bytes or so.

> If there is no overhead, then maybe an idea for a future Inform feature
> would be to automatically declare short_name if you use the first style
> of object declaration?

I think this would be unnecessarily confusing. short_name is part of the 
library, and could conceivably have a different meaning, or be totally 
unused, in a given Z-program. The object's built-in name (which is what's 
set in your first example) is, well, built in.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
