HT Tutorial Exercise 3 - Using watch

Using watch and print to examine the models behaviour

There are several levels of built-in trace. So far we have set watch to level 0, which only traces context elements. By manipulating the level, we can see some of the finer level workings of the architecture.

Remove the hungry-thirsty rules, keeping the default ones, by using excise -task, or re-start Soar and load the default rules. Then re-load the original "ht.s7".

Try running the model with the following watch commands. Try them individually, and then together. After each run, make sure you init-soar.

• watch -firings on

• watch -firings-preferences on

• watch -wmes on

• watch -phases on

It is worth noting that default rules begin with default*, and hence you should not take too much notice of these when reading through the traces. Such rules begin their conditions with :default also.

The more sporting of you may wish to then examine the rules that fired. You can either examine them in ht.s7, or by printing them out in the running process with the command p . It is possible that some rules contain attributes or features that you are not yet familiar with. These should be covered later in the tutorial.

If you want to trace just one rule firing you can do this by using the pwatch command.

Follow up questions

• What the heck is going on? Can you tell based on these traces?

• Now that you can see all the working memory elements, can you see how the conflict resolution mechanism works in Soar?