Cheepest of the bunch.

arrggg

Member
I know that Kolmafia doesn't want to become a mallbot, and I'm not asking for that.

But can we have a function Like:

Buy_Cheepest(item1, item2, item3, [etc...])

Where it would buy one(1) of whichever item is cheepest in the mall.

(Hope this hasn't been brought up before)
 

macman104

Member
[quote author=arrggg link=topic=340.msg1832#msg1832 date=1155304951]
I know that Kolmafia doesn't want to become a mallbot, and I'm not asking for that.

But can we have a function Like:

Buy_Cheepest(item1, item2, item3, [etc...])

Where it would buy one(1) of whichever item is cheepest in the mall.

(Hope this hasn't been brought up before)

[/quote]Mafia always buys the cheapest items, wouldn't make much sense if it bought the most expensive one, eh? :)
 

picklish

Member
[quote author=macman104 link=topic=340.msg1843#msg1843 date=1155314559]
Mafia always buys the cheapest items, wouldn't make much sense if it bought the most expensive one, eh? :)[/quote]
I think the question was about wanting to buy the cheapest of a set of items (like the cheapest hi mein, for example).
 

Tirian

Member
:) I presume that he's looking for the ability to buy whichever of a rockin' wagon or a perpendicualr hula is less expensive, since they give identical results but you'd have no way of knowing which one is cheaper in the mall.

IANH, but I can see two problems with this function. The first is that it's doing N separate mall searches for every individual item you'd wind up buying, which can get ugly in a hurry if your list was something like all 12 top-shelf SHC drinks. The other is that it can also be the core of a mallbot. If I don't mind buying an oven and a chef-skull-in-the-box every half-hour, then I will be able to buy up all of any item in the Kingdom that I want that costs less than 1000 or 10000 meat. It's not necessarily a dream come true, but it's still a lot of profit for a lot less work than writing your own mallbot by hand.

Something that might satisfy some our desires and calm some of Holatuwol's nerves on both of these points would be adding a new buy( int quantity, string search_request ) that would do a mall search on whatever string you specified and buy the cheapest items that came out of that. At least that would let us buy "clover" or "grenade", and then it gives us more enthusiasm to force Jick into letting us search for all reagent pasta or all DB drinks in a single search.
 

macman104

Member
[quote author=arrggg link=topic=340.msg1846#msg1846 date=1155317555]
Yes, like if I used:

Buy_Cheepest(Spring, Mr. Eh, Chef-in-the-box)

It would buy me one spring.

[/quote]Ah, I see what you mean. Hmm, I guess that'd be kinda interesting, useful for buying chow mein and stuff, when you don't care what kind. The only thing I could think of is that if someone had a massive list, that'd be alot of server hits, but meh, I don't code, so I'll let someone who does decide. But kinda nifty.
 

picklish

Member
[quote author=Tirian link=topic=340.msg1847#msg1847 date=1155317749]
IANH, but I can see two problems with this function. The first is that it's doing N separate mall searches for every individual item you'd wind up buying, which can get ugly in a hurry if your list was something like all 12 top-shelf SHC drinks. The other is that it can also be the core of a mallbot.[/quote]
The first problem is easily solved by having N be a parameter to the function.
 

arrggg

Member
[quote author=Tirian link=topic=340.msg1847#msg1847 date=1155317749]
IANH, but I can see two problems with this function.  The first is that it's doing N separate mall searches for every individual item you'd wind up buying, which can get ugly in a hurry if your list was something like all 12 top-shelf SHC drinks.
[/quote]
well... I'm haveing to do all those mall searches anyway when I manually do this, (and I often double check because I forget a price, causeing more hits)

[quote author=Tirian link=topic=340.msg1847#msg1847 date=1155317749]
  The other is that it can also be the core of a mallbot.  If I don't mind buying an oven and a chef-skull-in-the-box every half-hour, then I will be able to buy up all of any item in the Kingdom that I want that costs less than 1000 or 10000 meat.  It's not necessarily a dream come true, but it's still a lot of profit for a lot less work than writing your own mallbot by hand.
[/quote]

Well right now I can make a sudo-mall bot where I have a script that tries to buy a Mr. A but I only have 10000 meat available (all the rest in meat paste) most of the time it will fail... and this will not buy a bunch of chef-skull-in-the-box... so I don't see this command adding anymore then what can be done now (as far as a mallbot is conserned)
 

Nightmist

Member
[quote author=arrggg link=topic=340.msg1850#msg1850 date=1155320987]
Well right now I can make a sudo-mall bot where I have a script that tries to buy a Mr. A but I only have 10000 meat available (all the rest in meat paste) most of the time it will fail... and this will not buy a bunch of chef-skull-in-the-box... so I don't see this command adding anymore then what can be done now (as far as a mallbot is conserned)
[/quote]

*Watches hola make all scripts force abort when a purchase fails from the malls*

=P But yeah, cool idea, I personally would probably use it a lot but im perfectly fine with just random-ing it and then hoping noone bought up the prices xD.
 
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