On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Ronald Fenner wrote: >On Tuesday, June 18, 2002, at 12:57 AM, George Greer wrote: > >>> And finaly cutting back on the files that are there, IMOTD MOTD, why >>> can't these be called from help.hlp or something? >> >> Easier to modify just one file than root around in a big one. >> >well I have done a conversion of the help system to individual files >stored like ascii player files with a main index that specifies the >keywords and the file to look for the entry in. [...] > >Might be worth incorporating into the code as it would cut down on the >help file size and if one of the entries gets corrupted then the whole >help system isn't shutdown because the system couldn't load an entry, >though if the index goes bad you'll have to rebuild it. I suspect you're using more disk space now because your average help entry is less than 4,096 bytes. If you have a really large hard drive on a Windows machine, you might even have a 32,768 block size. Unless your help entries are books, it's not a good idea. My off-the-cuff design would have the MUD maintain an in-memory index built at boot-time. This would let it find the appropriate file (socials.hlp, wizhelp.hp, etc.) and location within the file to print for the user without keeping the entire help database in memory, like CircleMUD. Probably have a stored 'file modification time' to make sure the index can be rebuilt in the event of external file change. -- George Greer greerga@circlemud.org -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | | Newbie List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/circle-newbies/ | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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