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Forum » SpaceEngine » General Discussions » Naming ambiguities (What happens when two objects share the same name?)
Naming ambiguities
JCandeiasDate: Friday, 11.10.2013, 17:13 | Message # 1
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Hi. I have a question: what happens in SE when two objects share the same name?

The reason I ask is because there are a few such cases in the Solar System (although here there's always the alphanumeric codes of asteroids and comets to help), and I don't see in the body catalogue definitions (in the .sc files) any way to distinguish them. In Celestia, they use full hierarchical relations, so that the moon Io, whose parent body is Jupiter, would never be confused with the asteriod Io, whose parent body is the Sun. If you want to put something in orbit, you have to use "Sun/Jupiter/Io" or "Sun/Io", respectively. In SE, however, that doesn't happen. So how does the program know which of the Ios you'd be referring to?

There's also a second reason I ask: I've been slowly making my own system generator to use in Celestia (which I'll now adapt, of course), in a huge excel file, and since my names are also automatically generated in it, there's a true possibility of occasional repetitions.



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HarbingerDawnDate: Friday, 11.10.2013, 17:39 | Message # 2
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Quote JCandeias ()
In SE, however, that doesn't happen. So how does the program know which of the Ios you'd be referring to?

By its parent body. When searching for an object, the list shows you both the name(s) that match your query, and what their parents are. However, if you give two bodies the same name and the same parent, you can not tell which is which without selecting them and checking, and you would probably have trouble assigning database information for them. But there's no reason why there should ever be two objects with the same name around the same parent body, so in practice there should never be a problem.

Also, for questions about SE, you should ask them here rather than creating a new thread.



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Edited by HarbingerDawn - Friday, 11.10.2013, 17:40
 
JCandeiasDate: Friday, 11.10.2013, 17:54 | Message # 3
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Quote HarbingerDawn ()
By its parent body. When searching for an object, the list shows you both the name(s) that match your query, and what their parents are. However, if you give two bodies the same name and the same parent, you can not tell which is which without selecting them and checking, and you would probably have trouble assigning database information for them. But there's no reason why there should ever be two objects with the same name around the same parent body, so in practice there should never be a problem.


Hm... I doubt that's the only problem. Say I'd like to put a ship in orbit around, say, Io. In its ParentBody tag I'd only put "Io", right? But which Io? The moon or the asteroid? Unless I'm mistaken, the code has no way of distinguishing between the two.

I know this isn't of great relevance for existing bodies, since their naming conventions were created precisely to resolve this kind of ambiguity. There's always a number or a code to distinguish between them. But it might be a problem when names are randomly generated.

Quote HarbingerDawn ()
Also, for questions about SE, you should ask them here rather than creating a new thread.


Oh. I thought that thread was only for frequently asked questions, not for the occasional unusual question. Sorry about that. Feel free to transfer this there and delete this thread.



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HarbingerDawnDate: Friday, 11.10.2013, 18:21 | Message # 4
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Quote JCandeias ()
Say I'd like to put a ship in orbit around, say, Io

Hopefully we can actually do this in SE soon smile

Quote JCandeias ()
In its ParentBody tag I'd only put "Io", right? But which Io? The moon or the asteroid? Unless I'm mistaken, the code has no way of distinguishing between the two.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that... however, since each of those objects has an alternate name, you could simply use that.

Quote JCandeias ()
But it might be a problem when names are randomly generated.

It's best to try to make sure that each name is unique, or that each object has more than one name. But yes, being able to use the hierarchy like in Celestia to distinguish objects would be a nice feature to have to make these sorts of things easier.

Quote JCandeias ()
Oh. I thought that thread was only for frequently asked questions, not for the occasional unusual question.

Even a frequently asked question must be asked a first time smile SpaceEngineer's intent was that all questions be asked there, and the most commonly asked ones would be added to the OP, thus forming an FAQ.



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Edited by HarbingerDawn - Friday, 11.10.2013, 18:28
 
JCandeiasDate: Monday, 21.10.2013, 22:57 | Message # 5
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And it happened.

A naming error led to two bodies sharing the same name, after which a moon was added to the mix. The moon, despite being defined in the same catalogue as the body it was supposed to orbit ended up orbiting the other one. I suppose this has to do with which one was the first to load to SE's internal database? The catalogue of the wrong one is listed first in universe.cfg.

Maybe such cases could be disambigued (to borrow a word from wikipedia) with smarter parsing of the catalogues, linking stuff by proximity in the catalogues themselves? Feasible?



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