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3.8 Internal documentation

For you to read this tutorial and memorize it would be very flattering to me, but not really practical. Instead, learn to make use of the internal documentation available on the MUD itself, there's usually quite a bit available.

For Efuns, Sfuns and Lfuns you have the man command. As with all man commands it accepts partial names syntax, so it's usually easy to find a function even if you aren't completely certain of its name.

For example, you want to find the user id of an object, but you can't remember exactly what the function was called. You have a pretty good notion it ended with the letters 'id' though:

> man -k *id --- simul_efun: export_uid geteuid getuid seteuid setuid

The output tells you that the matches can be found in the chapter simul_efun of the manual. Had their been matches in other chapters, they would have been displayed as well.

Now you also know that the function was 'getuid', so you just type man getuid (or even man simul_efun getuid if you want to be very specific) to get the full text.

The really experienced LPC coder has a good grasp of which of the objects provided in the mudlib does what, so that he'll know which object to inherit for a specific job. He is also rather at home with what the function-sets each object defines, but naturally he doesn't know all of them. What follows from this is that any coder, experienced or not, simply has to spend quite a bit of time reading the objects to find out exactly how to use them when he needs them.

A great help in this respect is the sman command. The source code manual simply is a collection of all headers of all functions in /cmd, /lib, /obj, /secure, /std and /sys.

The command allows you to search for partial names as well, so finding the exact function you need usually is a matter how having just an inkling of what you're after, then spending some time with sman to find the exact command.

For example, you need to find the function in a player that returns his occupational guild name, but you don't know which object defines it, nor what the function was called.

> sman -k *guild* --- /lib/guild_support: create_guild_support init_guild_support --- /secure/master: add_guild_master query_guild_type guild_command query_guild_type_int guild_filter_type query_guild_type_long_string guild_sort_styles query_guild_type_string load_guild_defaults query_guilds query_guild_domain remove_guild_master query_guild_is_master set_guild_domain query_guild_long_name set_guild_long_name query_guild_masters set_guild_phase query_guild_phase set_guild_style query_guild_short_name set_guild_type query_guild_style --- /std/guild/guild_base: list_major_guilds query_guild_not_allow_join_guild query_guild_keep_player query_guild_skill_name query_guild_leader query_guild_style query_guild_member --- /std/guild/guild_lay_sh: query_guild_incognito_lay query_guild_tax_lay query_guild_leader_lay query_guild_title_lay query_guild_member_lay query_guild_trainer_lay query_guild_name_lay query_guild_type query_guild_not_allow_join_lay remove_guild_lay query_guild_style_lay --- /std/guild/guild_occ_sh: query_guild_incognito_occ query_guild_tax_occ query_guild_leader_occ query_guild_title_occ query_guild_member_occ query_guild_trainer_occ query_guild_name_occ query_guild_type query_guild_not_allow_join_occ remove_guild_occ query_guild_style_occ --- /std/guild/guild_race_sh: query_guild_family_name query_guild_style_race query_guild_incognito_race query_guild_tax_race query_guild_leader_race query_guild_title_race query_guild_member_race query_guild_trainer_race query_guild_name_race query_guild_type query_guild_not_allow_join_race remove_guild_race --- /std/living: clear_guild_stat set_guild_pref query_guild_pref_total set_guild_stat

Well, that was a lot of output, but with just a little bit of thinking applied to the results you now know that the name of the function is query_guild_name_occ and that it can be found in the file /std/guild/guild_occ_sh. So, to get the header you now type sman /std/guild/guild_occ_sh query_guild_name_occ.

The better your knowledge of the mudlib is, the better you can make your sman query and thus produce a narrower result the first time. Not that there's anything wrong with typing the command several times, of course!

NB! The index files and manual entries for sman need to be regenerated when something changes in the mudlib. For some reason it seems that the temptation to meddle in the mudlib is too big a temptation for most mud administrations to resist for very long; so if you suspect that the manual entries doesn't reflect well on the actual code in the mudlib, remind them to regenerate the manual. All this assuming, of course, that the people who change the mudlib have the common sense of changing the headers of the functions they modify at the same time.