findvals

Purpose

Fetch the list of values of a concept's attribute.

Syntax

aValue = findvals(concept, attrNameString)

aValue - type: val
concept - type: con
attrNameString - type: str

Returns

Value

Remarks

Concepts can have zero or more attributes, and attributes can have zero or more values. Values of attributes can be strings, numbers or other concepts. This function finds the value (or list of values) that have the name attrNameString. In order to find the next value, use nextval. If the concept is bad, an error appears in the log output window.

Example

In this example, we show how we can create a concept like noun and assign it as the value of a word's attribute. We create the concepts named words and noun as children to the root of the KB (concept), and then make the concept book a child of words.

G("words") = makeconcept(findroot(), "words");
G("noun") = makeconcept(findroot(),"noun");
G("noun_book") = makeconcept(G("words"),"book");

The KB editor at this point looks like:

Next, give book the attribute "is a" and make the concept noun be the value of book's attribute "is a":

G("an_attr") = addattr(G("noun_book"),"is a");
addconval(G("noun_book"), "is a", G("noun"));

The remaining code finds the first child of words named book, gets the concept which is the value of the attribute "is a" and prints out its name ('noun') to output.txt:

G("aConcept") = getconcept(G("words"),"book");
G("anotherConcept") = getconval(findvals(G("aConcept"),"is a"));
"output.txt" << conceptname(G("anotherConcept")) << "\n";