[chuck-users] Time logic

[Spencer Salazar]

Juan-Pablo,

On Nov 10, 2007, at 6:04 PM, Juan-Pablo Caceres wrote:

> A 'while(expression)' cycle will stop executing the statement as  
> soon as
> the expression evaluates to 'false'. In the case of evaluating (dur =>
> now), I think that there's also a timing logic involved, in the sense
> that if (1::second => now) evaluates to 'true' only when 1 second has
> passed, it should evaluate to false in every other time, which would
> cause the control to exit the block.
>
> What (I think) is going on is that (dur => now) as an expression is  
> just
> waiting, advancing time, and as soon as time has advances 'dur', it
> evaluates to true by default. The fact that this expression  
> evaluates to
> true after the waiting time is what confuses me, compared to  
> traditional
> programing language control structures.

As with the assignment operation in C and others, the specific  
semantics of (A => B) are that the expression evaluates to whatever  
the value of B is after the => part has occurred.

If B happens to be 'now', chucking to it has the side effect of  
pausing that shred for the duration specified by A.  Nothing in the  
control flow of a shred executes when that shred is waiting for the  
duration of A to pass.

Additionally, keeping in mind that (A => B) evaluates to B regardless  
of what A and B are, if B is not zero after the chuck operation, it  
will evaluate to true in a conditional expression.  If B happens to be  
'now', it will almost always evaluate to true, the exception being at  
the very beginning of the ChucK virtual machine.

In consequence, running this program like so:
// begin 0samp.ck
if( 0::samp => now )
     <<< "Hello!" >>>;
// end 0samp.ck
$ chuck 0samp.ck

produces no output, because the program runs while 'now' is still 0  
(i.e. no time has passed), and thus evaluates to false in the  
conditional.  Running this one does print something, because the  
program allows one sample's worth of time to pass:
// begin 1samp.ck
if( 1::samp => now )
     <<< "Hello!" >>>;
// end 1sampl.ck
$ chuck 1samp.ck

(Note that these examples don't work right in miniAudicle or through a  
chuck --loop, because the virtual machines created in those  
environments allow 'now' to become non-zero before any programs can  
run.)

Though in my humble opinion, its not very clear or readable to put  
things like in 1::second => now in a conditional expression.

Hopefully this doesn't confuse matters more...

spencer

> Sorry for the lengthy and confusing email!
> JPa.
>
>
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