What's with src.dir?

ID:170918
 
Nov 30 2004, 8:48 am
 
mob
    verb
       Test()
         world << "[src.dir]"

That returns a number from 1-10 when clicked;What am I doing wrong?, I'm totally stumped.

Thanks in advance.
-Thorg
Nov 30 2004, 8:54 am
That's because dir is a number from 1 - 10. The directions are constants predefined by DM.

NORTH = 1
SOUTH = 2
EAST = 4
WEST = 8

Diagonals are the cardinal directions logically ORed together:

NORTHEAST = NORTH | EAST = 5
SOUTHEAST = SOUTH | EAST = 6
NORTHWEST = NORTH | WEST = 9
SOUTHWEST = SOUTH | WEST = 10
Nov 30 2004, 8:55 am
In response to Shadowdarke
Thanks, Did it allways work like that?, the F1 brought up help screen said it should output one of the directions in capitals.

-Thorg
Nov 30 2004, 9:08 am
In response to Thorg
Yes, it's been like that since long before I came to BYOND. I looked at the reference and it is a little misleading the way it's presented. Those are the values dir is limited to, but it doesn't explain that those are constants for numerical values as I explained above. Here are a couple procs that might help.

    sd_dir2text(dir as num)
    /* accepts a direction and returns the lowercase text name of
        the direction */
        switch(dir)
            if(NORTH)       return "north"
            if(SOUTH)       return "south"
            if(EAST)        return "east"
            if(WEST)        return "west"
            if(NORTHEAST)   return "northeast"
            if(SOUTHEAST)   return "southeast"
            if(NORTHWEST)   return "northwest"
            if(SOUTHWEST)   return "southwest"

    sd_dir2Text(dir as num)
    /* accepts a direction and returns the Capitalized text name of
        the direction */
        switch(dir)
            if(NORTH)       return "North"
            if(SOUTH)       return "South"
            if(EAST)        return "East"
            if(WEST)        return "West"
            if(NORTHEAST)   return "Northeast"
            if(SOUTHEAST)   return "Southeast"
            if(NORTHWEST)   return "Northwest"
            if(SOUTHWEST)   return "Southwest"