"Joseph Zeglinski" <JAZ### [at] rogerscom> wrote in message
news:3e5419b4@news.povray.org...
> Hi,
>     I have a string Value I need to "print". However, in order to scale the
> space for the word to fit on the object, I need to know how many charcaters
> are in the variable. Is there a strlen() function in POVRAY ?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
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>

Gentlemen,
    Pray, thank you one and all ...some 35...so far. It was a simple question,
and wasn't meant to get off topic in some cases, with snide remarks by some.
As I scanned through the barrage of idle conversation, I wasn't sure if I had
inadvertantly logged into Monty Python's flying circus in rehearsal.

    To answer some of your questions about just WHO would be so very lazy
enough to ask such a totally stupid question about a "strlen()) function...I
see why you are dying to learn this answer.

(1) I asked for HELP on the "Newusers" group, because I mistakenly thought it
was meant for newbies on POVRAY, like myself. If that is the case, based on
the replies, I am in the wrong group - is there a "tiny tots for POVRAY"
group?

(2) I was just entering my initial trials with this product, and needed a
quick answer.  But, did I do "any work" to find the answer for myself?

    Well...yes... I downloaded the POVRAY Tutorial (because after a half day's
search on the internet and local bookstores, I couldn't find a POVRAY book,
still in print, even a used one,  to buy. Then I read through all of the
discussions on the POVRAY documentation group, etc. trying to find out if a
book was in the works. Discovered they aren't organized enough to answer at
this time, perhaps ever. Still no strlen() answer... so I looked through the
help file ... without much luck ( I must have missed it, I guess? damned
bi-focals).
    O.K. Needed to get out the heavy artillary - needed to print out (computer
screens are for propeller heads)  the TUTORIAL for POVRAY 3.5 - strange name
for a tombe of 782 pages - needs to be renamed  THE MANUAL or the BIBLE.
Inkjet....forget it. My old Laserjet-2 ... life is too short.
I needed to upgrade my 15 year old, and working great, LJ-2, to something
better.... yes... a Colour HP Laserjet 4600DN ...double sided duplexed colour
printing at an actual 8 seconds a colour page for a mere $4,500 Canadian
pesos.
    Finally, 1 hour 20 minutes, and 782 double sided pages, later I had a
beautiful copy of the colour  POVRAY Tutorial.
    However, as lovely as it is, and as well written as it was, and extremely
well organized, in all of it's Bachus-Naur illustrated explanations, along
with a detailed list of subject matter at the front  - though this entire
section was badly screwed up in PDF - the rest was indeed exquisite.
To my dismay, this turkey ... has no INDEX to scan for a topic quickly. Did
you guys forget something after putting the tombe to bed?
So, I flipped through the pages hunting for anything that talked about
"strings... functions... the meaning of life"  ... (should have read the
responses for that).

    So, after considerable hunting, expenditure of a fair amount of time and
energy, and a premature purchase of a printer for $4,500 ... I was no closer
to the holy grail of a strlen() answer.
Although ...I was beginning to think somebody was stringing me along.

(3) You have been wondering just what kind of a "dolt" ... you were being kind
... would dare ask such a stupid and simplistic answer from such an esteemed
and areodite group of newbies(?), who would be so patient with a newcomer with
his first post to the website, expecting someone equally new, to answer
quickly, patiently, and simply - from what he had himself learned in his early
days as a newbie.

The ANSWER....
    Well, I started out in "Machine Language Programming" (that's OP-CODES
entered using mechanical toggle switches, on a front panel with neon bulbs -
later advanced to typing them into a Selectric typewriter console on the old
IBM-1620 console - loved that machine, wish I had one today. That was using
binary one's and zero's, for most who are too young to know about such things,
back in the early 60's (... that's in the 1900's), and soon graduated to using
an ASSEMBLER. Finally, worked my way up through Fortran, Snowball, and several
others I don't recall, upto "The Great C+".

    So to your question "How does he know about something called strlen()"
enough to spell it correctly in a question  - ... I tripped over it while
reading my C-Manual.

Oh yes - is he an artiste? No, just a profesional engineer, with years of
dabbling in computer graphics as an interest. I would never have tried POVRAY
if I didn't find a sudden need to use it with EagleCAD 3D circuit board
eye-candy creations. Then, like most, got addicted... but I'm working on that
problem.

(4) Finally ... no one actually took the effort to simply copy the strlen()
syntax statement into a reply.
And I thought everybody was so expert in such a simple task.

    I really enjoyed the serious sessions of navel gazing ...or is it navel
grazing...that this question provoked. It might end up improving the
documentation ... perhaps by adding something like an INDEX section? Reading
the replies, I certainly learned a lot about the intricacies of language
structure, and how poorly the documentation in POVRAY is considered, by some.

    Then again... maybe I should have hunted for THE MANUAL instead of the
TUTORIAL at the POVRAY website. Or perhaps, have downloaded the POVRAY source
code, and skimmed through it - surely would have found a strlen() something.
My mistake, I just took the "obviously" easy way out.

I now have my answer ... but did anybody spot the answer to my question in all
of the 35 or so replies thus far?


...This has been niether a rant nor a flame...
but perhaps a tale told by a Dolt
full of sound and fury...
signifying nothing...

Cheers,
the DOLT !



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