Can argument be as another aliase?

[TatianaParshina]

Question about usage of argument:
https://github.com/SimGus/Chatette/wiki/Generation-modifiers#argument

Example was provided in link:

~[greetings$NAME]
   Hi $NAME
   Hello $NAME!

I would like to use instead of $NAME another alias:

~[NAME]
  John
  Elvis

Following usage
~[greetings$~[NAME]]
cause SyntaxError: Invalid token

Is there a way to use alias as argument?

[SimGus]

Hello!

There is currently no way to do that, though it's a feature I found myself needing as well.

I worked on implementing such a thing (there might still be a branch on this repo with what I tested out), but it was not clear what the best syntax for that would be: I think we'll agree ~[alias$~[some other alias]] is quite hard to read.
I'm still trying to figure out a good syntax, along with other questions (should I allow more than a single alias as an argument? should I allow nested arguments, i.e. an alias as an argument of another alias which is itself an argument to a third one? etc). Once I have an answer, I'll implement it (I'll try to do this shortly).

For the moment, you will need to write your template files in a different way, to avoid the need of an alias argument.
There are actually a few (arguably ugly) workaround you can use:

• Use the alias directly instead of an argument:

~[greetings]
   Hi ~[NAME]
   Hello ~[NAME]!

instead of

~[greetings$NAME]
   Hi $NAME
   Hello $NAME!

• Break your alias into a beginning and end, and use the alias (or whatever template) in between:

~[greetings-start]
   Hi
   Hello
~[greetings-end]
   !
   , how are you?
~[greetings]
   ~[greetings-start] ~[NAME] ~[greetings-end]

instead of

~[greetings$~[NAME]]
   Hi ~[NAME]!
   Hi ~[NAME], how are you?
   Hello ~[NAME]!
   Hello ~[NAME], how are you?

I know that none of those workarounds is fully satisfying, which is why I'm still willing to implement such a feature.

I hope this helps!

[TatianaParshina]

Hi @SimGus , thank you a lot for your quick reply!

1. Actually in my task I need to use nested alias. I mean structure like this:

~[NAME]
  ~[FIRST_NAME] ~[SURNAME]

~[FIRST_NAME]
  John
  Bill

~[SURNAME]
  Smith  
  Brown

2. I think it will be also useful to add functionality to support entity as argument as well :

@[NAME]
  John
  Elvis

@[FIRST_NAME]
  John
  Bill

@[SURNAME]
  Smith  
  Brown

~[greetings$NAME]
   Hi $NAME
   Hello $NAME!

So for different intents it can be used as:

%[intent_name]
    ~[greetings$@[NAME]]

%[intent_first_name]
    ~[greetings$@[FIRST_NAME]]

%[intent_surname]
    ~[greetings$@[SURNAME]]

[SimGus]

Hi!

I see the kind of use case you have, it's quite similar to what I tried to do a few months back.

I still need to think a little bit more to find a good syntax for this, but once it's done I'll start implementing it.
I'll hit you up when I update the code, but I must warn you this is a quite large modification to the current codebase, so this might take time.

Thanks for your feedback :)