interesting bug issue

[Patrick Nichols <pnichols@graphics.lcs.mit.edu>]

Gents --


* * *
Just an FYI about some interesting issues I'm hitting as I write
code that you might have some thoughts on.  I'm writing some code that
probes the LCS events database on the web (right now it is UNDESCRIBABLY
ghetto and inefficient, but it works... sort of) and I'm hitting an issue:
for my signs to work, rooms are uniquely identified using a global
namespace. The naming scheming Jason used (and hence I use) looks like:

  NE43-218 -> NE43.2@2@18@OFF

or generallly:
  [BUILDING NAME].[FLOOR]@[FLOOR]@[ROOM NUMBER]@[OFF|CONF]

The issue is that in the LCS events database, most rooms are referred to
in their general usage at MIT (eg NE43-218) or as text descriptions ("the
4th floor lounge").  I'm writing a lookup function for now that translates
rooms to their known namespace equivalent, but I'd appreciate it if any of
you code ninjas out there can think of a better way of doing things.

-Patrick