[pandorabots-general] Form before function

[Brian Hoecht]

Dr. Wallace and I spoke on this recently.

The short answer to your question is that how you store the files
makes no difference.  All AIML categories are loaded into memory
by the Interpreter and the pattern matching does NOT use the
order of the category listing in the files.

The Alice files are ordered this way because they were getting
large and difficult to trace through.  A utility was run to order
them, yet if the goal was to order the categories as the
Interpreters should run through them and find them, then a couple
of mistakes were made (i.e.  categories with the wildcard * in
their pattern come before the textual patterns and categories
with the wildcard _ come after - Interpreters operate the other
way around).

I haven't had this confirmed, but I also believe that
contractions in patterns (or the <that> tag) need not have the '
removed as you show below... the Interpreters will strip them out
automatically allowing you to have your textual patterns look
good.


-----Original Message-----
From:
pandorabots-general-bounces+brian_hoecht=msn.com at list.pandorabots
com
[mailto:pandorabots-general-bounces+brian_hoecht=msn.com at list.pan
dorabots.com] On Behalf Of R. B. Chandler
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:11 AM
To: pandorabots-general at list.pandorabots.com
Subject: [pandorabots-general] Form before function

I have a general question about the form in which AIML is done.
Generally 
most files start with A and work their way down to Z. I know the
reasoning 
behind this but if it were random would it make any difference to
the 
computer? I only ask because I would like to group reductions for
each 
instance of a single word into one group where it is easier to
use the 
<srai> command as in:
*
A *
AN *
I AM *
I M *
YOUR *
YOU ARE *
YOU RE *
Where "*" equals a given word and the reply is the same for all,
most of, or 
several groups in the same categories. It would just make it
easier as I 
make my way through the alphabet instead of having to jump all
over.


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