When doing a :build in 5.2 chatscript, I keep getting a serious error

*** Warning- line 3 of missingsets.txt

However, there is no observable missingsets.txt file that I can find.

Is this file hidden and I have to get rid of it to start over.

Sorry to be such a newbie….

John Bourne

Is that the ONLY message, nothing else around that message?

missingsets is a transient file during build where the system writes references to concepts in if they are not already defined. At thend of compile it reads that file and sees if the concept has finally been defined somewhere.  So usually you get that message when it also tells you what concept is not defined.

Warning messages are not fatal, regardless and your chatbot will function, except that specific rules about which warnings arose may not work as you expect.

EVERYONE on this forum but me is a newbie.

Ok, thanks Bruce:

I had taken out quibbles to see if that was a problem with other code.  Thus, missingsets was complaining it couldn’t find quibbles in the simplecontrol.top file…  and yes there was more… So, I understand that now….

I still have the mystery about why some things (oh, so simple) that I’m doing don’t work.  I have a series of gambits each followed by
a: (~yes ) .....set a variable .and some text
a: (~no )  .. set a variable and some text

going through the gambits one by one works fine.
answering yes works just fine
answering no works once or twice but then never answers again when going to more and more gambits.

I feel stupid asking this since it seems that this sort of thing has always worked for me before….  Brain is going bad I think…..

Your problem is probably that you say the same things on the no side, and your topic (or rule) is not marked REPEAT.
Ergo the system blocks your later no’s from repeating the same thing.

What I did to diagnose this was:
1. compile your code
2. follow along the path you laid, saying no.
3. wait until it failed.
4.  :trace ~office
5.  :retry
and then the trace (which is not very long) said it all.  It tried to issue your message correctly but said it was blocked by repetition. So then I checked your topic and found no repeat enabled.

Thanks Bruce - of course, you are absolutely right and an easy change.  Made me think though about guidelines for marking a rule as used.  In my case, each gambit gathers some information from the user.  Done by having a forced choice (yes or no). Somehow in my mind I was thinking each rule as it was used would be marked as used - not marked as used before it was used since the rule duplicated an earlier rule.  Of course, ^keep will work too….  All about thinking through what happens…..

JB

You are misstating things a bit. A rule is marked as used when it is used.  A reply (what is said) is marked as used also after it is used.  ^keep is NOT relevant to this discussion as it applies to rules and not replies.  ^repeat is relevant to replies.