A = A + 1;

On Wed, 4 Feb 2015 05:58:24 -0700 (MST)
Bananapeel <[hidden email]> wrote:

> adriang wrote
> > Does the following
> > echo(vsum([[1,2],[3,4]]));
> > work for your definition?
>
> I don't know any normal language that would automatically allow
> vsum([1,2,3,8]) and vsum([[1,2],[3,4]]) into the same function and give a
> sensible result.

M, Haskell, Java, C++ templates,  Smalltalk....

> That's like applying an integer function to a string and expecting it to magically figure out what you want.

Which is what many languages do.

> Would you expect the result to be 10 or [4, 6]?

What matters is that the function is defined sensibly and behaviour
defined for that type and to be useful.

Eg is the average of  matrix of 3D co-ordinates more usefully a set of
vectors or a single point giving the "middle" (for that definition) of the
object ?

Alan

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In a functional programming language, a 'constant' is an expression
like '42' which always has the same value, in every run of the
program. A 'variable' is a named value that can have different values
in different runs of the program. Even if you have a top level
definition like
    x = 0;
this can still vary, in OpenSCAD, because you can override the value
'0' in several ways, eg by invoking openscad with -Dx=1.

Like Bananapeel said, OpenSCAD is a functional programming language.
There are many others, such as Haskell, Ocaml, F#, ML, Erlang, and so
on. The word 'variable' is used in all of these languages to describe
what OpenSCAD calls a variable. And there isn't really a good
alternative to the word 'variable'. So we need to do what Bananapeel
said: fix the documentation and fix the error reporting so that
OpenSCAD can be more easily understood by people coming from an
imperative programming background.

On 4 February 2015 at 08:34, Richard Benjamin <[hidden email]> wrote:
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adriang wrote

Does the following
echo(vsum([[1,2],[3,4]]));
work for your definition?

You should be able to validate that yourself. Everything that I wrote was valid OpenSCAD code, and formed a complete instruction set. If you want a specific answer, I could argue that yes it does work. The return result is "undef", which is a perfectly reasonable return result for such a function applied to a vector of vectors.

I wrote my function to fit roughly the same signature as that of Joymaker (although admittedly that signature was for mean rather than sum). It's obvious what is expected for a single vector of integers, but less obvious when that vector includes other non-integer elements. It would be possible for me to write a function that properly delves into the depths of the vector and does something more useful, but its behaviour for that would depend on the thoughts of the person who uses the function. I notice that R will flatten any [simple] vectors when calculating means and sums:

> a <- c(c(1,2,c(6,4)),c(3,4)); mean(a);
[1] 3.333333

But what about complex numbers? What if I want to put a function in as one of the arguments? What about string values? What about oversized input? What about blocking input? What about non-deterministic input? Sure, you can provide answers to these, but designing a function to cover every conceivable [mis]use is silly.

This is a nitpicky and offtopic rant which is largely unrelated to the issue of how to name OpenSCAD variables, but perhaps at least demonstrates that nuances of programming languages mean problems of interpretation can't necessarily be fixed for everyone. I don't see how we can keep the mathematical purists happy, while at the same time explaining things in a "read once, understand everything" fashion, as well as keeping debate to a minimum so that the bowls of petunias don't get annoyed with pointless banter.