Editing mirc/identifiers/$*

{{mirc title|$* Identifier}}'''$*''' is a construct, not an identifier, it allows you to iterate over all of the tokens contained within $1-. The way this works is much like a while loop. ''$*'' has been omitted from the help file since while loops were introduced, especially because the behavior of $* is quirky in some places.

''$*'' is extremely powerful, because it is much faster than using a while loop on a list of tokens. Understanding how this works is pretty simple, so consider the following:

<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">var %list a b c d,%a 1
while ($gettok(%list,%a,32)) {
    echo -a $v1
    inc %a
}</syntaxhighlight>
This can be written as:
<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">tokenize 32 a b c d | echo -a $*</syntaxhighlight>

The above is much smaller, and a lot faster. Pretty cool, isn't it?

== Notes & quirks ==
Why was the ''$*'' identifier removed from the help file in the first place? Well, ''$*'' was removed because it does not really work the same way that the other identifiers do, and because it is quirky.

Quirky? Quirky, how?

Well, mIRC takes the command ''$*'' appears in, and replaces all of the occurrences in the line by a special marker: ''`~$*:'' An example of how this is accomplished is shown below:

<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">//tokenize 32 abcd | echo -a $left($*,1) $+ $chr(3) $+ $mid($*,2)</syntaxhighlight>

Further examining the code, it is easy to understand why the above returns such a value:
<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">//tokenize 32 abcd | echo -a $mid($*,2)</syntaxhighlight>

Why isn't this returning bcd? Because of the usage of the special marker ''`~$*'', mIRC has stored the command as actually '''echo -a $mid(`~$*,2)'''.

Then, for each token (here only '''$1 == abcd'''), mIRC evaluates the line. '''$mid(`~$*,2)''' becomes ''~$*'', and then mIRC replaces the marker by the token and executes the echo command. However, after an operation like ''$mid'' in this example, that marker cannot be found. Basically, it cannot be guaranteed that the correct value of ''$*'' inside an identifier can be found.

There is a workaround for the above issue, and that is by using scid and scon:
<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">//tokenize 32 abcd | scon -r echo -a $!mid( $* ,2)</syntaxhighlight>

'''Note''': This workaround will double evaluate the content of the token, replace "abcd" above with $!time and it will evaluate.

mIRC replaces '''$*'''  by the marker, but scon has an extra evaluation system which fits perfectly. The ''$*'' mechanism is enabled on scon, and mIRC stores the command of the ''$*'' as '''scon -r echo -a $!mid( `~$* ,2)''' mIRC then evaluates the line for each token, which then becomes: "scon -r echo -a $mid( abcd ,2)" Finally, the scon command is executed, resulting in the expected value being echoed.

Another issue is that you cannot call ''$*'' more than once in the same scope; the command will simply be skipped. However, this can also be circumvented/worked-around :)

Simply retokenize after using ''$*''.
However, note that '''$*''' will remember the number of token it already went through, ''$*'' will only start from the previous number of tokens + 1, look at this example:

<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">//tokenize 32 1 2 3 | echo -a $* | tokenize 32 4 5 6 7 8 | echo -a $* | echo -a here</syntaxhighlight>

The first three tokens of the second tokenize, "4 5 6", are dummy tokens which are passed to fill in the gap. '''$*''' is actually starting from the 4th token.
If you are dealing with dynamic parameter and want to use $* again in the same scope, you can use '''$str(AT,$0) $+''' as the dummy tokens, where A is a non token character, and where T is a token character, that indeed makes sure the correct number of dummy tokens is used:

<syntaxhighlight lang="mIRC">//tokenize 32 1 2 3 | echo -a $* | tokenize 32 $str(A $chr(32),$0) $+ 7 8 | echo -a $* | echo -a here</syntaxhighlight>

'''Note''': This sexy workaround works even inside a loop, but a better workaround is to call an alias and to execute the new $* in there, the previous tokens will be cleared.

== Compatibility ==
{{mIRC compatibility|2.1a}}

== See Also ==
[[List of identifiers - mIRC|mIRC Identifiers]]
{{mIRC identifier list}}

[[Category:mIRC identifiers|$* identifier - mIRC]]