interactive window

[Mark Lucas]

I cannot seem to use if...then conditional statements in the interactive window. I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. For example, should this work?
dim hold as c
dim test as c
hold="001"
if hold="001" then test="true"
?test [Hit Enter]

I always get a pound sign # when I hit Enter after the if...then statement, and test ends up null.

Thanks for any advice.
Mark

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: interactive window

Mark,

the If... Then ... End If sequence is a multi-line
block in Xbasic. If you were writing it in
a script it would not be all on one line, it
would be:

If hold = 100 then
test = "true"
end if

To do this in the interactive editor use the
semi-colon to delimit the lines like this:

dim hold as c 
dim test as c 
hold="001" 
if hold="001" then; test="true"; end if
?test
= "true"

-- tom

[Mark Lucas]

RE: interactive window

Thanks Tom!

I had tried it on separate lines, but not with the semicolons.
Works for me just fine now.

Regards,
Mark

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: interactive window

Mark,

To clarify. You cannot do the If... End If block on separate lines in the interactive editor. You must do it all on one line. The semi-colons are there to tell Alpha where the line break would be if it were a normal script. This is all necessary because the interactive editor is line oriented. It doesn't know about loops or blocks.

--tom

[whanigsberg]

RE: interactive window

However, if you have entered multiple lines of code you can select them and click on run on the toolbar.

Bill

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: interactive window

Really? Didn't know that. I'm curious is that a new feature of V5 or have I been missing it all along?

-- tom

[Melvin Davidson]

RE: interactive window

Actually, you can, providing you comply with the syntax.
Then # sign indicates that interactive editor recoginizes the beginning of block statements and is waiting for the correct end of block indicator to process.

eg:
X = "Blue"
if x = "Blue" then
#y = "Green"
#end if
?y
= "Green"

Works just fine.
FYI. For and While loops also work.

regards,
Melvin

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: interactive window

More good news!

Boy, I'm behind the times! -- tom

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: interactive window

Interestingly, I don't find your tip, or Bill's, indexed under Interactive Editor in the CHM. -- tom

[Melvin Davidson]

RE: interactive window

Not only that, but we now have another President named Bush, People listen to Music on something called an MP3 player and you can load all A5 help files, the President's Biography and music files on something called a jump drive.

Oh yes, they are found Rip Van Winkle. :)

Regards,
Melvin

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: interactive window

Shoooeee,

I better not fall asleep again anytime soon!

-- tom

[Lenny Forziati]

RE: interactive window

You can even go as far as defining a function right in the interactive window:

function welcome as c (name as c)
#welcome = "Welcome to the interactive window, " + w_upper(name)
#end function
?welcome("tom")
= "Welcome to the interactive window, Tom"


There isn't much you can't do there.

-Lenny

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: interactive window

Lenny,

What happened to your icon up in the tree view? We miss it!

Peter

[Lenny Forziati]

RE: interactive window

Hmmm, I didn't realize it was gone I'll take a look into it

[Blake]

RE: interactive window

Tom,

I found a good one out the other day, too. If you have a code block in the interactive editor, you can edit it freely. To run it again, you just have to go to the end of the last line and press Enter.

===Blake===