NWE Help: MOO: Digging: Naming

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Naming an object can be a tricky business. The first thing to know is that there are two sorts of names; there is the "base" name of an object, i.e. the value of the .name property, and the "modified" name, i.e. the value returned by the :name(...) verb. When you specify the name when you @create an object (see `help @create'[1]) or @rename it (see `help @rename'[2]), you are only setting the base name (as well as the object's aliases, which don't enter into this discussion). The modified name is automatically generated from the base name depending on the particular situation. Usually this just adds an article in front of the name, like "a" or "the", e.g. if an object is listed in a player's inventory. You can control how the modified name is generated with a number of auxiliary properties. Let's try a few examples.

Suppose Janet wants to create a football. She types:

        @create $thing named "football" 

then does an inventory and sees:

        Carrying:
	 a football 

Notice that she did not include "a" in the name when creating the football; it gets dynamically added to the name whenever she does an inventory. Now if she were to drop the football, she would see:

        You drop the football. 

while other people in the room would see:

        Janet drops a football. 

Notice that the modified name is different depending on who sees the message. The difference is that the first message uses the definite-article modified name, while the second message uses the indefinite-article modified name; in pronoun-substitution lingo (see `help pronouns'[3]), the first one uses %dd, while the second uses %di.

Follow the links below for more information.

• Possessor:: Who owns an object
• Unique:: If the object is the only one of its kind...
• Number:: The number of objects
• Proper:: If the object is a proper noun
• Summary:: In case you don't want to read all of the above