Matching
Oftentimes, players find themselves in a situation where they are either carrying two objects with the same name or two objects with the same name are in the same room. This can be frustrating because it always matches to the first object. Fortunately, there is a solution. By adding other/third/fourth/fifth before the object name, you can specify which object you wish to use.Example
You see a red apple, a green apple, and an orange apple.
To get the green apple, you can either type GET GREEN or you can type GET OTHER APPLE.
Alternatively, you could say: GET 2ND APPLE or GET 3RD APPLE to get the second or third apple.
This form of matching also works with repairs. You can REPAIR 4TH TURRET or REPAIR FOURTH TURRET.
Another way to match objects is by prefixing your matching string with 'MY'. This is especially handy when picking your drone out of a bunch. Some examples of this:
collapse my drone - This will collapse the first drone in the room that belongs to you.
collapse my third drone - This will collapse the third drone in the room that belongs to you.
The MY argument will work with other commands as well, but you may not always own the objects you think you own. So you never know when it will work properly.
Yet another alternative is to use <number>.<object> matching. Example: "get 3.bird" will get the third bird in the room. You can also combine this form of matching with the "my" modifier to only match to objects that you own. For example, to get the second bird in the room that you own, you can type: "get my.2.bird"
You can use dot-style matching to match to the last matching object by replacing a number with a dollar sign. For example, if you see eighty apples in the room but you don't want to type 80.apple, you can instead type $.apple to achieve the same result. This is particularly useful when you have the 'Fail on Over-Match' MATCH-OPTION enabled.
If you find yourself in a situation where several objects have a partial match in their name, it may be desirable to tell the MOO to only match the whole word instead of partial words. You can do this by adding a plus sign (+) in front of the word you want to match. Perhaps an example:
You see a length of barbed wire, a barbell, Bart Jones, a bar, a red barn, and a bar of gold here.
If you simply type 'look bar', it will match to the barbed wire first. In order to match to the bar, you would have to count all the way to 4.bar. An easier way would be to type 'look +bar' and match directly to the bar itself. Similarly, you can add modifier to the plus syntax to change the order of matching. To look at the bar of gold, for instance, you can type 'l +2.bar' or 'l +other bar'.
Related Topics: Matching Aliases