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verement / lambdamoo

The LambdaMOO server (with Unicode support)
http://codepoint.the-b.org/
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Preposition “off of” can never match? #10

Open verement opened 10 years ago

verement commented 10 years ago

One of the possible verb preposition specifiers is “off/off of”. However, due to the way prepositional phrase parsing happens, it seems impossible that the phrase “off of” can ever match — because it always matches “off” first, and the “of” becomes part of the indirect object string.

I imagine this has never worked correctly in LambdaMOO?

Would there be any harm in reversing the specifier order to “off of/off”?

verement commented 10 years ago

@wrog Any thoughts on this?

wrog commented 10 years ago

modulo those who construe any behavioral change as "harm" (i.e., I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was code out there unwittingly depending on this), that would seem to be in line with the original intent. Either that or we just change the specifier to 'off'. One thing worth checking is whether this would mess up the db format; I forget how this stuff is actually saved.

verement commented 10 years ago

I checked on the db format; the preposition is saved as a single integer identifying the collection of equivalent prepositions, so it would not need to change if the order of prepositions within the specifier were to change.

verement commented 10 years ago

Also FWIW, I have verified there are no verbs in either LambdaCore or a recent Waterpoint core that actually use the “off/off of” preposition.