DBP 7.4 - Strings are parsed in a bizarre manner

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Benjamin

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Joined: 24th Nov 2002

Location: France

Posted: 8th Oct 2009 07:22 Edited at: 8th Oct 2009 07:22

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I think this might result from the fact that you are allowed to nest speech marks, but the following certainly can't be intended behaviour:

+ Code Snippet

#constant BAR 123

print ""FOO""
print ""BAR""
print " "FOO" "
print " "BAR" "

wait key
end

+ Code Snippet

#constant BAR 123

print ""BAR""
print ""BAR""

wait key
end

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HowDo

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Location: United Kingdom

Posted: 8th Oct 2009 12:56

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seam to me that depending on how many speech marks you have, gives a different result.

+ Code Snippet

#constant BAR 123
print FOO
print BAR
print BAR
print "-"
print ""FOO""
print ""BAR""
print ""BAR""
print "-"
print " ""FOO"" "
print " ""BAR"" "
print " ""BAR"" "
print "-"
print " " "FOO" ""
print " " "BAR" ""
print " " "BAR" ""
print "-"
print " " "FOO" " "
print " " "BAR" " "
print " " "BAR" " "
print "-"
print "" "FOO" " "
print "" "BAR" " "
print "" "BAR" " "
print "-"
print " "FOO" "
print " "BAR" "
print " "BAR" "
print "-"
print """FOO"""
print """BAR"""
print """BAR"""


wait key
end

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.

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Green Gandalf

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Playing: Malevolence:Sword of Ahkranox, Skyrim, Civ6.

Posted: 8th Oct 2009 16:34

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Can't resist joining in the fun. Try this:

+ Code Snippet

#constant BAR "123"

print BAR
print ""BAR""
print ""BAR""
print BAR

wait key
end

This has to be a bug.

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HowDo

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Location: United Kingdom

Posted: 8th Oct 2009 18:14 Edited at: 8th Oct 2009 18:39

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If I am reading my constant right BAR 123 is a integer and BAR "123" is a string, although when I make one as string it breaks the code.

edit

+ Code Snippet

#constant BAR 123
print ""BAR"";"=BAR"
wait key
end

now I am confused, what should happen when using ""BAR"" ?

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.

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Green Gandalf

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Posted: 8th Oct 2009 18:46 Edited at: 8th Oct 2009 18:47

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Quote: "now I am confused, what should happen when using ""BAR"" ?"

No idea.

[Actually, I assume the compiler should replace BAR with whatever follows BAR in its constant definition so #constant BAR 123 should mean that ""BAR"" gets replaced by ""123"" before further compiling occurs. How DBPro interprets that is anyone's guess - and Benjamin guesses (knows?) that it is a string whose value is "123" (i.e. the inner quotes are characters in the string). But I'm guessing now.

But it should be consistent and easily predictable if nothing else - which it plainly isn't.

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Benjamin

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Location: France

Posted: 8th Oct 2009 18:54 Edited at: 8th Oct 2009 18:54

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I don't know what DBPro tries to do, but a constant should only replace an identifier with an exact match, which means that if it's in a string or is contained within another identifier, it should be ignored.

I think overall the string parsing (and constant handling) is pretty messed up and I think it needs an overhaul.

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Bug Reports / DBP 7.4 - Strings are parsed in a bizarre manner