Re: WILD THINGS

[ROBERT HOLMGREN]

Well, I could kick myself for not checking the SIZe of wildcards on the CMline!
So bloody simple! They're len=2, and the invisible char is a preceding
Ascii-0, i.e. {Ascii-0}A, {0}L, {0}N, {0}S, {0}W, and {0}X. To get a match
with the contain operator Ascii-238 (any Xy version), an Ascii-0 is sufficient,
the presumptions being that Ascii-0 is what generates reverse video in CMline
wildcard displays, and that reverse video is only used with wildcards.

Parenthetically, David, isn't it worth asking WHY we ALWAYS get this kind of
crack-the-code information from third parties, and never from XyQuest? You ask
them a direct question -- I asked here some time ago, what generates reverse
video on the CMline -- but they don't give the bloody answer! They never even
ALLUDE to this stuff!

My experience with Ascii-0 is similar to Tyson's. XyWrite deletes 0's when it
reads them in a file from disk. But Xy does SAve them, if you can generate
them and insert them in a file (though you can't see them). And you can get
Ascii-0 into a Save/Get all by itself, very easily in v3.54+ (you don't need to
write it into a file as Tyson suggests); and laboriously in v3.53-, but I think
its do-able. nclosed with this msg, a routine for v3.55+ to read the CMline
and evaluate any number of wildcards accurately (to store the line with
wildcards). Since Ascii-0 is generated within the program and stored in a
Save/Get, there's no problem of "losing" it via a disk file read; moreover, the
CMline as saved by this routine doesn't include Ascii-0 at all but rather funcs
WA WL WN etc., so it won't be "buggy". (The longer I stared at this routine,
the more concise it got; maybe you can squash it further -- I'm getting
cataracts. Much harder is a self-contained routine to do the same thing in
v3.53-: just getting Ascii-0 into a S/G is very delicate; you don't have the
XS parser, and I can't get Ascii-0 onto the CMline so I have to open a window
and try to capture it there, where the code has to be "just so". Plus
procedural problems, e.g. how to capture Ascii-0|174|175 without first wiping
out the very CMline that you want to read! whew)

What I'd like to know, something I've long wanted to know, is how do you get an
Ascii-0 on the CMline? In straightforward or contorted fashion, I can force a
1-byte form of every other character onto the CMline, except Ascii-0. (This
may simply be another way of asking how to force reverse video on the CMline!)

*Enclosed File: CMLINE.PM