Red Lion Crimson 3.1 complex expressions

OkiePC said:

So if a bit is true, you want the display to show its associated text, and if the bit is false, it will show nothing, correct? And you probably want the box to just list the active (true) bits from top to bottom with no wasted space for bits that are false...that about right?

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1. If Red Lion supports arrays or lists of strings, and the message window is expecting a list of strings,
   • initialize an empty array at the start of the routine, before the first {if (bit)...} statement
     • Probably something like array = [];
   • Remove the else; statements*
   • Instead of return "string";, do something like
     • array.append("string"]; or
     • array = array + ["string"];
     • or whatever is the equivalent in the Red Lion script language to append an item to an array
   • At the end of all the if (bit) array.append(...); statements, return the list of strings
   • In the code that called that routine, clear the message window and create a loop to process each string in the returned list and add each into the message window.
2. If there are no arrays, perhaps you can concatenate strings together. If that is the case, concatenating strings, with a new line and/or a carriage return between each pair of string might give you a single string that will display as you like in the message window. The steps would be similar to those above for the list:
   • initialize an empty string at the start of the routine, before the first if (bit)...; statement
     • Probably something like return_string = "";
   • remove all of the else; statements*
   • Instead of return "string";, do something like
     • return_string = return_string + "string\n";
     • Note the \n at the end of the string; that is a new line; it may need to be a carriage return (\r) or both "string\n\r"; - check your Red Lion programming guide to determine which may be required.
   • At the end of all the if (bit) ...; statements, return the list of strings:
     • return return_string;
       

drbitboy said:

If you can get there and create Msg_array as an array of flag tags, an approach that separates the data from the code is this:

Code:

int i = 0;
cstring t = "";
cstring sep = "";
do {
   if (Msg_array[i]) {
     t := t + sep + Msg_array[i].AsText;
     sep := "|";
   }
} while (++i < 40);
 return t;

That saves writing forty if statements, and it also makes it easier to add, remove or re-order flag tags.



You may be able to replace 40 with Msg_array.Extent or something similar.


Also, this does not add an extra line terminator at the end of t.

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If (Msg_Array[i]) t := t + Msg_Text[i];

OkiePC said:

Code:

If (Msg_Array[i]) t := t +Msg_Text[i];

Where Msg_Text was an array of cstrings and you used a startup program to put the words in each of its members that you wanted. Brute force like my original example is much less elegant, but more efficient.

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drbitboy said:

Thanks for coming back and cleaning up my mess.


Too bad about the array of flag tags behavior.


Separating the bit and the text (Msg_Array[] and Msg_Text[]) is no better than the brute force if statements: with so much copy-paste it may take months to even notice all the typos.

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OkiePC said:

I say that as a guy who has been editing text based code with a fixed width font since the Atari 400 days, so what I find easy might be ridiculous to others.

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