"[GDS|Entropy]" <gds### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Is this the best I can hope for? Is there some other way to detect the
> populated length of an array? dimension_size is *useless*. Might it be that
> I am forced to form the array within the loop which uses it? That would
> suck...not very OO...but then SDL isn't very OO to start with, ironically..


Prepared to give yourself a big slap on the head?

Try this (*ta-daaah*):


      -------------------------
       #ifdef (myArray[i]) ...
      -------------------------


So a fail-safe code to loop through an array would look something like this:

#declare i=0;
#while (i < dimension_size(myArray,1))
  #ifdef (myArray[i])
    #debug concat("[", str(i,0,0), "]=", str(myArray[i],0,0), "\n")
    #declare i=i+1;
  #else
    #debug concat("[", str(i,0,0), "] undefined\n")
    #declare i=dimension_size(myArray,1); // force exiting of the loop
  #end
#end

(unfortunately, POV doesn't have a break statement for loops (its #break
statement is only of use in #switch statements), nor does it "short-circuit"
its & operator so #while (i < dimension_size(myArray,1) & defined(myArray[i]))
will not work properly, hence the comparatively ugly way of terminating the
loop)

Or, if your list may contain "holes":

#declare i=0;
#while (i < dimension_size(myArray,1))
  #ifdef (myArray[i])
    #debug concat("[", str(i,0,0), "]=", str(myArray[i],0,0), "\n")
  #else
    #debug concat("[", str(i,0,0), "] undefined\n")
  #end
  #declare i=i+1;
#end

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