Conversational Variable Collection

FormatClass Library

LanguageC#

What It Is

A system for maintaining a set of numeric variables using plain-language commands

Status

Last Reviewed:

I did use this in a weird POC involving a text adventure game and Opti’s SaaS CMS. Otherwise, this was just a theory I wanted to prove.

Details

An CVC allows you to store and modify a list of labeled numbers, and ask questions of it to make decisions.

(Honestly, this probably isn’t going to make a lot of sense until you watch the video at this link. That’s what will put it into context for you.)

Visually, your variable collection might look something like this (this is just a visualization for your sake – it’s a data construct, and doesn’t actually have a visual representation).

AGE: 52
NUMBER_OF_CHILDREN: 3
PERCENT_CLUELESS: 100

It’s quite simple: each variable consists of a label (a “name”) which has a numeric value.

Your variable collection starts off with nothing in it. Type this:

show

Nothing should display. Because, like we said, there’s nothing in it to start.

To create a value enter this command:

set AGE to 52

AGE is the name of the variable. It can be any combination of letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes. If you enter anything else, it will be automatically corrected by the system.

I put it in uppercase here to highlight it, but the names aren’t case-sensitive: age and AGE are the same thing.

52 is the numeric value we want to set the variable to.

Now type this to display what’s in the collection:

show

It should display something like this:

AGE: 52

When I have a birthday, you can increase my age by using this command:

increase AGE by 1

You can say increase or decrease, and use any number.

(If the variable doesn’t exist, it will be automatically created at 0. So increase a non-existent variable by one will create it as 0, then increment it, leaving it at 1 by the end of the operation.)

Now your variable collection looks like this:

AGE: 53

You can store more than one variable at a time by simply setting another variable just like you set the first one:

set NUMBER_OF_CHILDREN to 3

Now your variable collection looks like this:

AGE: 53
NUMBER_OF_CHILDREN: 3

You can “ask questions” of your variable collection. For example, any of these questions will return true or false:

is AGE more than 50
is NUMBER_OF_CHILDREN equal to 2
is AGE between 20 and 80

(Again, case does not matter. I only capitalized the variable name so it sticks out a little more. It’s a pretty good convention to follow.)

If a variable doesn’t exist, every question will return false.

Instead of a question, you can ask for the same information declaratively, like this:

AGE is more than 50
NUMBER_OF_CHILDREN is equal to 2
AGE is between 20 and 80

In this sense, you're making a statement, and asking the collection to confirm it (`true`) or deny it (`false`).

To find out if a variable exists (or doesn't), you can ask this:

does AGE exist

(Remember that a value of 0 is still a value, so if you have something with a value of 0, and you ask if it exists, it will return true.)

As noted above, you can also ask this declaratively:

AGE exists
AGE does not exist

Cheat Sheet

Here are all the possible commands.

show

set [NAME] to [NUMBER]

remove [NAME]

what is [NAME]

increase [NAME] by [NUMBER]
decrease [NAME] by [NUMBER]

increment [NAME]
decrement [NAME]

does [NAME] exist
[NAME] exists

is [NAME] equal to [NUMBER]
[NAME] is equal to [NUMBER]

is [NAME] not equal to [NUMBER]
[NAME] is not equal to [NUMBER]

is [NAME] more than [NUMBER]
[NAME] is more than [NUMBER]

is [NAME] less than [NUMBER]
[NAME] is less than [NUMBER]

is [NAME] between [NUMBER] and [NUMBER]
[NAME] is between [NUMBER] and [NUMBER]

is [NAME] at least [NUMBER] and [NUMBER]
[NAME] is at least [NUMBER] and [NUMBER]

is [NAME] no more than [NUMBER] and [NUMBER]
[NAME] is no more than [NUMBER] and [NUMBER]