A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

[BrentG]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Help for parts of v8, v9, v10 are now in those 3 places....4 counting this messageboard!

...and thank God for this message board ;)

[SMARTII]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Ok,
I found another way to de-pad a number into a string, ie str(###).
Try
?STR(219,0)
I like that better than
ltrim(str(###))
xBasic STR(###,[n],[c])
does many things towards formatting a number-to-string than most other STR()-used languages.

[martinwcole]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

nice looking car
looks like a 52 Mecury, or maybe Lincoln

[SMARTII]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

nice looking car
looks like a 52 Mecury, or maybe Lincoln

'54 first year they stopped using flat-head eng's. in the USA.
This was the first Ford OHV V-8 in Mercury/Ford products.
Cadillac had used an OHV since 1949.
This '54 Merc happens to have the Cad Engine.
Good to hear from you..make sure u click my Sig! (Gives me goosebumps. Esp MR BLUE at 8.26sec in a V6)

[martinwcole]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

MAN, nice looking engine!!! - looks like 6 deuces

my hot rod claim to fame was in 1960 I had a 1960 red and white Impala 2dr hard top, with as I remember the 348 engine.

Anyway, put in 3/4 racing cam - bent the vales twice shifting from 1st to second dragging, had to put in notched pistons - I was the talk of the Dairy Queen for a while, cruising thru with a gal.

those were the days!!

[SMARTII]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

That 348 became the famous "409" of the Beach-Boys song.
And now the earliest "348" in my favorite '50's Color again:

[DaveM]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Going on memory, the first OHV V8 was Chevrolet in 1918 or 1919.

Olds had the rocket OHV V8 in 1949 also.

Ford flat head was giving up too much the the Chev 6(mostly truck engines) on shortrcacks in the early 50's so the more powerful OHV V8 from ford. chevrolet followed in 1955 with the 265.

.

[CALocklin]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Ok,
I found another way to de-pad a number into a string, ie str(###).
Try
?STR(219,0)
I like that better than
ltrim(str(###))
xBasic STR(###,[n],[c])
does many things towards formatting a number-to-string than most other STR()-used languages.

Interesting. I didn't realize it would do that. However, I just hope that's not a "bug" that will get fixed sometime in the future. It certainly does create a problem if you use 1 instead of the 0 and I couldn't find anything that says the 0 is an acceptable option.

Sometimes things like this are unintentional and work for awhile then get "fixed" in a future update. Until I see something that says this function is supposed to work like that when a zero length is specified, I think I'll stick with ltrim(str()) which I know should always work.

Perhaps another reason for using ltrim(str()) is that there is no question of the intent. It's entirely possible that someone reading your code in the future (maybe even you - the original developer) would question why the 0 was used and whether it was a typo - maybe is was supposed to be 10 or even 20. Sometimes the extra spaces are desirable for formatting and/or parsing.

Just some additional "points to ponder" - do whatever works for you.

[SMARTII]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Great Memory!
The "jimmy" six had more cu in and a heavy duty main bearing web that allowed double the stock HP.
BTW, that Chevy 288 cu in (4.7 L) 1918 OHV8 (pic) produced 36HP. About the same as a big John Deere Riding mower. It took 8cu in to produce 1hp.
Today's race engines easily produce 4hp/1cu in.
Stock 2010 production cars avg about 1.3hp/1 cu in.
And all this is possible by GREAT software based design.

[SMARTII]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

You're right Cal.
But I figured the "0" meant 0 padding so that's what I tried.
The XBASIC intent was to control the padding to a specified amount.
BUT your value better be <= the len of that pad value when converted to a string!
Ex:
?str(524,2)
= ""

If you did STR(524,2) you will get nothing but Chr(127)'s.
In my case I have to pad a STR(###) with 0's so it is alway the same fixed length.
So I still have to add a "PADL()" .
Ex:
? padl(str(3,1),8,"0")
= "00000003"

RE:"..original developer) would question why the 0 was used and whether it was a typo - ..."
Fortunately I'm Comment obsessed.

Interesting. I didn't realize it would do that. However, I just hope that's not a "bug" that will get fixed sometime in the future. It certainly does create a problem if you use 1 instead of the 0 and I couldn't find anything that says the 0 is an acceptable option.

Sometimes things like this are unintentional and work for awhile then get "fixed" in a future update. Until I see something that says this function is supposed to work like that when a zero length is specified, I think I'll stick with ltrim(str()) which I know should always work.

Perhaps another reason for using ltrim(str()) is that there is no question of the intent. It's entirely possible that someone reading your code in the future (maybe even you - the original developer) would question why the 0 was used and whether it was a typo - maybe is was supposed to be 10 or even 20. Sometimes the extra spaces are desirable for formatting and/or parsing.

Just some additional "points to ponder" - do whatever works for you.

[csda1]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

I'm with Cal on this. If it isn't documented, it is subject to change. If you really hate the LTRIM(STR()), then create a function (say LS() ), but it will be a bit slower.

Fortunately I'm Comment obsessed.

As for documentation, about 30% of the code bytes I write is documentation. Are you going to write more documentation explaining the anamoly than just using the LTRIM(STR())? Doesn't seem to be a win from my perspective!

[Steve Andrews]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

If you really hate the LTRIM(STR()), then create a function ...

Awhile back, I created UDF's for this purpose as stated in the Wishlist thread below
http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=72480

While strim() does what is being discussed, strimpad() pads left with zeroes to a default length of 8:

?strimpad(35)
= "00000035"
?strimpad(35,5)
= "00035"

I use these frequently throughout my applications. However, if I knew all along that ""+44 was the equivalent of strim(44), I may not have gone this route. It's questionable though I've grown accustomed to using strim().

Steve

[csda1]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Hi Steve,

One of Cal and my cardinal rules is never depend on implicit type conversions like this, ""+44 (unless officially documented and supported). There is too much chance that a future release will break it.

However, if I knew all along that ""+44 was the equivalent of strim(44), I may not have gone this route.

However, assuming you did want to depend on or use a questionable technique, in most cases just embed it in your own function. Had you used that technique in your Strim() function, then if a release of Alpha did break it, you would just have to fix it in that one function, without any other changes of your code.

This is one of the key reasons to use functions and not scripts. Scripts can not be used in expressions, whereas functions (well normal ones anyway) can!

[CALocklin]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Another nit-picky point is that most automatic conversions take longer. As simple as it is, even the last method given above takes slightly longer. (Not that most people would notice in this case.)
Try it:

stime = now()
FOR qx = 1 to 100000
    result = "" + 44
NEXT
ui_msg_box( "TIME", ltrim(str(now()-stime,10,3 )) )

'This one is about 0.1 seconds faster - at least on my computer.
stime = now()
FOR qx = 1 to 100000
    result = ltrim(str(44))
NEXT
ui_msg_box( "TIME", ltrim(str(now()-stime,10,3 )) )

What really shocked me was that I tested the above in v9 and v7 - v7 took much longer to run both methods (50%?) but the percent difference between the two methods was about the same.

[SMARTII]

Re: A survey on ALLTRIM as a Pain in the neck

Just for the information,
What would:
result = str(44,2)

Time at relatively?
I get 1.835 for ""+44
vs
1.616 for str(44,2)
On an AMD quad C:

result = "" + 44          1.329 
result = ltrim(str(44))   1.203    9.48% better. 
result = str(44,2)        1.187  10.6% better