After I made the last post with the raw code for creating multiline triggers, "adrian" on the IRC channel (#lusternia on GamesNET) mentioned I should create a macro to do it all automatically. Well, I gave it a shot and this is what I came up with.



I wrote this macro more specifically for my defences script that I'm working on. I'll probably adjust it a bit for some other trigger heavy scripts (curing, combat, etc).

This macro is intended for use only in function form. It takes at least 3 parameters. The first is always the label for the trigger, which doubles as the name of the macro that contains the code you wish the trigger to run if matched. The second argument specifies whether the trigger is to match a defence going up, or down (this determines whether it's highlighted dark yellow or bright yellow. The remaining arguments are the regexps for each line.

The thing I really like about this is that the regexps for each line can be entered just as if you were entering a one-line trigger for that line. You don't need to worry about extra backslashes, or escaping the $ anchor, my script takes care of that for you.

For example, lets say you load the following code from a script while running TF:


That code generates all of the necessary defs and macros for the multiline triggers. After loading that in, I typed "/list" to see the result. This is the code the above script generated:


That generated code doesn't have any linebreaks of course. When you put the linebreaks and tabs back into those generated commands, as if they'd come from a script you wrote, you get the following:


Which is almost identical to the code I posted previously (I found a few bugs with how I understood backslash compression while designing this new script).

I'm not certain if this script takes into consideration all posibilities, however it works for everything I need it for right now. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve this script or a better approach to solving the multiline problem, I'd be very interested in discussing it with you.

You are a genius Druth. You saved myself and possibly others from having their brains exploded due to extensive "smacking it against a wall". Your efforts and contributions are greatly appreciated. Now, I just need to get some time and start coding again...

Bug discovered in previous version.

The initial version of my multi-line trigger code posted above appeared to work fine at first. However, I was having problems with it matching INVOKE SERPENT, which is 4-lines long. The first three lines matched fine, however the fourth did not.

In testing I used the /TRIGGER command to send text to my system as if I was Lusternia (see /help trigger if you're unfamiliar with it). The serpent triggers worked fine in testing, however, when connected to lusternia and testing it they did not. I spent some time looking over debugging logs and found the error, but it still confuses me a bit. The way in which it failed on line four should've also happened on lines 2 and 3 if it was going to fail. My best guess is that for longer more complicated triggers (> 3 lines long), TF doesn't have enough time to get everything executed in the right order and gets bogged down.

The problem was that I was only using 3 levels of priority. The lowest for the first line, the second for the catch_all triggers, and the highest for lines >1. The new approach uses many more priority levels which takes care of the error. The downside to this is that the number of lines you can match is dependant on the number of priority levels you have available to you. The new approach requires 2 levels of priority for each line you wish to match. So if you want to match a 4-line trigger, you need to have 8 priority levels available.

Technically this shouldn't be a real problem, since the maximum priority level is equal to the largest possible integer, which is huge. The problem will come into play with how you setup your priority levels ahead of time. I had reserved 5-10 priority levels for each of my different types of highlighting. In most cases this would probably be enough, but I went ahead and expanded that to 50 levels available. This means I can match 25 lines and not run into problems with crossing priority levels and interfering with other scripts in my system. I'll probably never want to match more than 5 or 6 lines (10-12 priority levels), but I figured better safe than sorry.

Note:
If you're not using my colored logging script the old code should work fine for you. You just need to make one small change; make the triggers that match the actual lines you supply the macro not fall-thru (remove the -F option from the trigger definition).

Here's the new code:


I'll use serpent as an example. If you load this code into your system...


...this is the (nicely formated so you can read it here) trigger macro that gets generated: