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ifcheck question

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Posted by Tzaro USA (41 posts) Bio

Date

Tue 11 Jul 2006 02:09 PM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 11 Jul 2006 02:14 PM (UTC) by Tzaro

Message

I'm looking for a 'shortcut' to help clean up some of my code...

In struct clan_data, I changed int Class to short Class[7]. I did this so certain orders/clans/whatever could have only certain classes join their group (up to 7 different classes), if they wanted it class-specific. This is all fine and dandy, but when updating the code, I ended up having to do checks like:

   if( victim->Class != ( clan->Class[0] || clan->Class[1] || clan->Class[3] <etc> ) )

Is there a way I could change that so it'd loop the checks like...

   if( victim->Class != clan->Class[<0 through 6>] )
   {
      <blah>
   }

Hopefully you understand what I mean... :X Thanks in advance!

-Tz

Implementer of Lost Prophecy,
Tzaro

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Posted by Zeno USA (2,871 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #1 on Tue 11 Jul 2006 02:22 PM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 11 Jul 2006 02:57 PM (UTC) by Zeno

Message

You could use a for loop to do that.

for ( a=0; a < MAX_CLASSES; a++ )
{
   if( victim->Class != clan->Class[a] )
        <blah>
}

Where MAX_CLASSES would be whatever your Class[x] max would be.

Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy
http://www.biyg.org

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Posted by David Haley USA (3,881 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #2 on Tue 11 Jul 2006 02:24 PM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 11 Jul 2006 02:25 PM (UTC) by David Haley

Message

Quote:
if( victim->Class != ( clan->Class[0] || clan->Class[1] || clan->Class[3] <etc> ) )

This is not doing at all what you think it's doing: it's doing a boolean or on the classes, and if one of them is non-zero, the overall result will be true, and that will be compared to victim->Class, which is really not what you want.

Here's a better solution:


bool IntArrayFind(int * arr, int size, int item)
{
  int i;

  // Loop over all elements, looking for 'item'
  for ( i = 0; i < size; i++ ) {
    // is this the one we're looking for?
    if ( arr[i] == item )
      return TRUE;
  }

  // not found:
  return FALSE;
}

And then, your if statement looks like this:

if ( IntArrayFind(clan->Class, NUM_CLAN_CLASSES, victim->Class) == FALSE ) {
  // do something interesting, yay
}

where you have previously defined NUM_CLAN_CLASSES to be 7.

This is a much better solution than using several if checks. And incidentally, you can reuse it whenever you need to search an array of integers.

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by Tzaro USA (41 posts) Bio

Date Reply #3 on Tue 11 Jul 2006 06:16 PM (UTC)

Message

hahaha... I'm a moron. Apparently, I needed some sleep...

   if( victim->Class != ( clan->Class[0] || clan->Class[1] || clan->Class[3] <etc> ) )

I used the above originally... and eventually switched it to:

   if( ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) &&
       ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) &&
       ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) &&
       ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) &&
       ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) &&
       ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) &&
       ( victim->Class != clan->class[0] ) )

I switched it because it (obviously) didn't work, but I had no idea why, and that was the only thing I could come up with that actually did what I wanted. Thanks for filling me in on the 'why' Ksilyan!

Anyway, that just seemed like quite a bit to type and figured there's probably a much better way of executing those checks. I'll give both of those a shot and figure out which one I like more. Thanks for the input Zeno and Ksilyan. Much appreciated :)

Implementer of Lost Prophecy,
Tzaro

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #4 on Tue 11 Jul 2006 06:32 PM (UTC)

Message

I would suggest going with the helper function, since chances are you will need to do this in several places. Avoiding redundant code is important, and a helper function is an excellent way to recycle code. (Not to mention that this would be useful anytime you need to search an array of numbers for a number.)

Basically, whenever you find yourself typing something repetitive without thought, chances are it's something you can program in and have the program do it for you. :)

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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