StringDictCompare

calling form	description
StringDictCompare(array,dictentry)	Performs a StringCompare-like comparison of a string array given by array and the dictionary entry dictentry, returning 1, -1, or 0 if array is lexically greater than, less than, or equal to dictentry, respectively.

Actually, if you take a look at StringDictCompare’s code, you’ll see that it just writes the dictionary entry to a string array and does a StringCompare. Still, a step saved is a step saved, right?

Here is a silly usage example:

"The puzzlebot turns to you and asks, \"What is in the middle of holes?\""
GetInput("ENTER ANSWER IN QUOTES>")
string(names, parse$, 10)
if StringDictCompare(names, "l") = 0
    print "Correct!"
else
    print "Wrong!"

Which results in:

The puzzlebot turns to you and asks, “What is in the middle of holes?”
ENTER ANSWER IN QUOTES>“L”
Correct!

Some things to keep in mind:

1. The above source code assumes that an array called names has been created.
2. Just having “l” in StringDictCompare’s routine calling adds it to the game’s dictionary table (yay self-fulfilling prophecies!).
3. Also, as implied by the prompt text, the quotation marks around the “L” are important.
4. Lastly, parse$ is stored as lowercase text, so you can see that our uppercase “L” in the output did not fool it. Conversely, if StringDictCompare was looking for an “L” from parse$, it’d never recognize it, so keep that in mind if you are trying to match a string written from parse$ to a capitalized object.name property.

Why The Previous Example Is A Bad Example

If we had asked the player to not put the answer in quotes, we could have just had the line:

if word[1] = "l"
     ....

Just checking for it automatically adds “l” to the dictionary table so we can use the word array instead of parse$. Still, the author hasn’t replaced this page yet because he couldn’t think of a better example.