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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [Inform Compiler Extension] Changing the print_ret behaviour
Message-ID: <GJCv99.1CC@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 17:58:21 GMT
References: <GJC4n7.LH@world.std.com> <20010908122354.15031.00000436@mb-fm.aol.com>
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:92378

OKB -- not okblacke <brenbarn@aol.comRemove> wrote:
>Specifically, I'd like print_ret to print the text and return true but
>NOT print a newline.

In my current version, you can choose whether or not print_ret and
the short form "foo"; print newlines or not, but the latter is still
an abbreviation for the former--they have the same behavior. I'm not
sure I'd want to split them up. [The behavior of "print_ret" is, I
suspect, for historical reasons; it appears that the underlying
zmachine has a "print-string-with-newline-and-rtrue" opcode; printing
without the newline and returning true actually takes one more byte
of memory.]

I should note that I now have three different flags to the compiler,
all of which effectively result in Inform "compiling a different language"--
that is, the behavior of programs changes significantly depending on
how the switches are set. (If the output of newlines and suchlike can
be considered 'significant'.) Since normal Inform does not appear to
have any such language-semantics switches, I have doubts about the
likelihood of this being folded back into the official version,
so these compiler mods may only see very limited distribution.

SeanB
