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Verb Priority

The response from a User must normally be uniquely matched with a valid Verb within the currently active Verb Group. However, Verbs may have a Priority assigned to them, such that an ambiguous response may be matched by the Verb having the highest Priority within the Group. The Verb Priority may also be used to disable temporarily a Verb within the Group, whilst retaining the Verb within the Dictionary. Thus all Qualifiers associated with the Verb will not be lost when disabling a particular Verb, whereas they would be lost if the Verb were dropped. Consider the following example. The currently active Group is assumed to have verbs READ, REPLY and RESET. Using the Default Priorities, the User will have to specify either REA, REP or RES in order to ensure non-ambiguity. However, by raising the priority of READ above the default, responses of R or RE will match READ by default. Priorities may be defined to be any valid Integer, where Zero is the Default Priority, and negative priorities will disable the corresponding Verb.


Liz Buckle
Fri Jan 13 17:24:10 CST 1995