Best way to listen for about 10 specific messages?

[DorianaCele]

Hello,

One of my object uses a listening channel (say /222) to receive configuration commands (such as start, stop, etc). There are about 10 commands, all start with prefix "config:". So command 1 may be "/222 config:start" and command 2 may be "/222 config:stop". What I am wondering is, for this situation, is it better to write 10 llListen() on channel 222, each for one specific command; or to just do one llListen() on Channel 222 for anything, then analyze what the message is in the listen() event? And, is there a way to just write one llListen() which triggers the listen() event only when the received message has a specific prefix (in this case it is "config:")? "Better" means more efficient and consumes less CPU time. Thank you very much. 

[Qie Niangao]

There's no way to listen for, like, a regular expression, so a single llListen() would need to get everything on the channel and then analyze it. The thing is, even if you had ten separate llListen()s, the messages would still end up in one listen() event queue to analyze anyway, so the only advantage of the multiple llListen()s would be to specify tight filters on which messages can possibly wake up your script. As long as it's not using a high traffic channel (such as 0), that's not likely to be a problem, so I'd favor a single, wide-open llListen().

You can maybe experiment to find the fastest way for the listen() handler to exclude any messages received that don't match the overall pattern, and be efficient about the order in which you test for the individual commands.

(Aside: I suspect that even in pre-Mono days, ten separate llListen()s would be too many to be a net benefit (except maybe on channel 0), but tight listen filters were a bigger deal back then because script execution was so many times slower than testing filters in native code.)

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

You can only have one listen event, usually when several channels are anticipated the value of the channel parameter is checked for specific values.

Since you have a specific channel your simplest option is then to look for the substring in the message using llGetSubString, and then use a set of ifs to look at what is following that substring and process them accordingly.

An alternative is to have a list containing all the commands that follow "config:", and use llListFindList to find a match for the command, the resulting integer will be -1 (not found), or 0,1,2... and you can then process the command accordingly.

If the sender of the messages will always be the same person or object, the LLlisten event when set up can be told to listen for messages from a specific name or specific uuid.

 

(Qie beat me to it

Edited September 19, 2019 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[DorianaCele]

45 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

so I'd favor a single, wide-open llListen().

 

43 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

your simplest option is then to look for the substring in the message using llGetSubString, and then use a set of ifs

So I think both of you favor a single llListen() on anything rather than 10 separate llListen() on specific messages. Thank you!

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

An alternative is to have a list containing all the commands that follow "config:", and use llListFindList to find a match for the command, the resulting integer will be -1 (not found), or 0,1,2... and you can then process the command accordingly.

this ^^ what Prof said

a thing with parse to list is that when ":" is used as the delimiter then list cmd = ["config","start"] or ["config", "stop"] etc

so can check:  if (llList2String(cmd, 0) == "config) { arg = llList2String(cmd, 1) }

where this approach gets super useful is when some cmds have 1 argument and others have more than one.  Example: "config:color:blue".  "config:orient:up" "config:orient:down" etc

if (llList2String(cmd, 1) == "color" { tint = llList2String(cmd, 2) }

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

4 hours ago, DorianaCele said:

So I think both of you favor a single llListen() on anything rather than 10 separate llListen() on specific messages. Thank you!

It's pretty awkward but no matter what you do, you'll end up writing at least 10 if-checks for those 10 messages.