[pandorabots-general] Form before function

[Dr. Rich Wallace]

What Brian said is basically correct.  The file names are not important to
the AIML interpreter for matching purposes.  The file names exist solely
for the convenience of the botmaster.   Once you load your AIML into
memory, everything is stored in a data structure called the Graphmaster
and the file names are discared (except in some interpreters, the file
name information is saved in case the program is able to write as well as
read AIML files).

The project underway to reorganize the ALICE brain into more logical files
may be found at http://www.alicebot.org/aiml/aaa

Contractions are usually expanded by the pre-processor "normalization"
process that would normally convert "you're" into "YOU ARE", but again
this depends on the interpreter and the botmaster, so it may be the case
that the pattern "YOU RE *" could turn up.  I can imagine a situation
where the client typed YOU`RE or YOU at RE and these might be converted to
YOU RE by the normalizer.


> 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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