Sybil 1
Sometimes we do not particularly want to deal with all the variations on asking, telling, or answering someone something, but want to direct everything to a single conversational command:
And similarly, a difference between GIVE and SHOW is sometimes overkill:
It is also often the case that we want to accept more than one form of a term. For instance
will match either "Darius" or "king". If necessary, we can go a step further and define our own token to match a variety of phrases, like this:
The token "[Greeks]" will match all of "Athenians", "Spartans", "Greeks", "hoplite army", or "hoplite forces". It will not match "hoplite" or "forces" alone; it is important to note that the / divides individual words which are understood equivalently, but does not define entire phrases as equivalent. More about how Inform understands specific phrases can be found in the chapter on Understanding.
Test me with "test one / test two".
You can see the Sybil here.
>(Testing.)
>[1] test one
(Testing.)
>[2] ask sybil about persians
She nods gravely.
>[3] tell sybil about persians
She nods gravely.
>[4] sybil, persians
She nods gravely.
>[5] ask sybil about darius
Her smile unnerves you.
>[6] ask sybil about king
Her smile unnerves you.
>[7] test two
(Testing.)
>[8] ask sybil about greeks
She looks encouraging.
>[9] ask sybil about athenians
She looks encouraging.
>[10] ask sybil about hoplite army
She looks encouraging.
>[11] ask sybil about hoplite forces
She looks encouraging.
>[12] give the coin to the sybil
She accepts with a smile.