abbreviated commands (was Re:your mail)

[keech@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Eric said:
>
>This reminds me about an incident at a 36 shop years back. The system operator
>typed "C P <enter>" right after completing dayend for the banks.
>
>For those who aren't familliar with s36 shorthand, this stands for cancel 
>print.
>Every report was scrubbed, and dayend had to be reprocessed. Loved those single
>character commands! <g>
>
>Eric A DeLong
>

I hope the list will forgive a slightly off-topic post regarding the
joys (and woes) of abbreviated commands.

I absolutely love computer games, and one of my first loves was the
old Adventure-style games, which I played on my Apple II computer,
purchased with nearly my first paycheck from IBM.

For those unfamiliar with this type of game, one typed in commands
of the form VERB OBJECT, where the OBJECT was optional, and the
commands could be abbreviated to 3 characters.

In one of the games I came upon a bear on a mountain ledge, and the
bear absolutely refused to let me pass.  I tried giving the bear
everything in my inventory, I tried sneaking by the bear, attacking
the bear, but everything I tried just angered the bear, causing him
to throw me from the ledge.

Finally, after hours of frustration I typed in:

SCR*W THE BEAR

to which the game replied:

THE BEAR IS SO STARTLED HE FALLS OFF THE LEDGE.

Well, I was startled, too, enjoying a good laugh, and amazed that the
programmers had put such a thing in a game. (The games were much tamer
back then).

A couple weeks later I finally figured out that what the game really
wanted was:

SCREAM AT THE BEAR

which it would parse down to

SCR BEA

But, I felt my solution was slightly more elegant.

Marty (working for IBM, speaking for himself)
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