String Manipulation

[maincharName]

Is there an easy way to identify a specific word within a string? You see, I want the program to identify words such as "take" or “key” within a sentence no matter its placement.

If this is possible, then a person could type variations of the same sentence and get the same result. For example, whether you type “take key”, “take the key”, or “Well, I see that key sitting on the ground. Perhaps I will take it.” you will get the same message saying, “you have taken the key.”

PS: Is it possible to have a string variable represent more than one value? Could it represent “take”, “get” and “pick up” all at once?

Thank you for your time.

[person]

maincharname wrote:

Is there an easy way to identify a specific word within a string? You see, I want the program to identify words such as "take" or "key" within a sentence no matter its placement.

If this is possible, then a person could type variations of the same sentence and get the same result. For example, whether you type "take key", "take the key", or "Well, I see that key sitting on the ground. Perhaps I will take it." you will get the same message saying, "you have taken the key."

I don't know if this would be the best solution, but you could sort all of the words in a sentence in an alphabetic order. For example.

"It is a nice day today."
would be sorted to:
"a day is it nice today."

You could then perform a search to see if the strings that you are looking for are present in the sentence.

maincharname wrote:

PS: Is it possible to have a string variable represent more than one value? Could it represent "take", "get" and "pick up" all at once?

Yes. Look up "Records".

[maincharName]

Thank you, that helps a little. But how do I create a search?

[Tony]

index() is your friend - the function finds a substring in a larger string and returns its location.

so

code:

if index(" your sentance here ", " key ") > 0 then    % something about a key

it is important to have spaces surrounding your word, otherwise other words such as 123key456 will produce an unwanted result. As such, you also need to add spaces to beginning/end of your sentance (to check for first/last word) and lower/up-case everything, as "Key" is not the same as "kEy"

[maincharName]

It works perfectly when the text is predefined:

code:

var answ := "take the key" if index(answ, " key ") > 0 then   put "you have taken the key" else   put "sorry, what?" end if

But what did I do wrong here?

code:

var answ : string get answ if index(answ, " key ") > 0 then   put "you have taken the key" else   put "sorry, what?" end if

[Tony]

code:

var answ : string get answ

what's the value of answ?

[maincharName]

Same as in the one that worked: take the key

[[Gandalf]]

code:

get :*

This allows you to have spaces in your input. It will allow anything up to 255 characters in length.

code:

var answ : string get answ :* if index(answ, " key ") > 0 then   put "you have taken the key" else   put "sorry, what?" end if

This will not work because it is searching for a space after "key", which it will not find because your string ends at 'y'. Remove this space and it will work correctly.

[Tony]

maincharName wrote:

Same as in the one that worked: take the key

no it's not

code:

var answ : string get answ    % "take the key" put answ    % "take"

hmm... perhaps you need to read the whole sentance, and not just the first word

code:

var answ : string get answ:* put answ

edit: in a sentance such as "I am keyless" the program will think that you have a key. So just

code:

answ := " " + answ + " "

to add space buffers to beginning and end

[[Gandalf]]

Tut, tut.

What I find most interesting is that he had a post after:

Quote:

Same as in the one that worked: take the key

Which explained that he removed the spaces from the string, or something along those lines.

[maincharName]

maincharName wrote:

It works perfectly when the text is predefined:

code:

var answ := "take the key" if index(answ, "key") > 0 then   put "you have taken the key" else   put "sorry, what?" end if

But what did I do wrong here?

code:

var answ : string get answ if index(answ, "key") > 0 then   put "you have taken the key" else   put "sorry, what?" end if

Sorry about that, I'm a bit tired. To clerify, the first code didn't work when there was a space before and after the word key in quotations: " key "
so I changed it to: "key"

Unfortunately, the...

code:

var answ : string get answ

...still doesn't work

[Tony]

[Gandalf] wrote:

Quote:

Same as in the one that worked: take the key

Which explained that he removed the spaces from the string, or something along those lines.

It also tells me that he hasn't bothered to check what the actual value was, because clearly it is not the same

[maincharName]

Yes, it was the same! I just neglected to completely paste the code. That problem was in the forum, not the code.

[Tony]

maincharName wrote:

That problem was in the forum, not the code.

Unbelivable..

code:

var answ : string get answ %enter "take the key" put answ %what does it show?

If you're going to tell me that the value of answ is "take the key", you'd have to upload a screenshot.

[maincharName]

What? Ok, now I'm getting frustrated. Please just try it yourself if you don't believe me. Please copy the following code into turing, run it and type, "take the key" (without the quotations of course) and see whether it gives you the same results as the predefined version.

code:

var answ : string get answ if index(answ, "key") > 0 then put "you have taken the key" else put "sorry, what?" end if

I actually do care and have had turing open the whole time.