One thing I noticed while trying to compose some functions is that the
conditional expressions are not recognized by POV-Ray's function VM.

I can work around this with select(), but sometimes it would just be a lot
easier on my brain to use the simpler and more direct conditional syntax.






Possible Parse Error: Suspicious identifier found in function! If you want to
call a function make sure the function you call has been declared. If you call
an internal function, make sure you have included 'functions.inc'.

Parse Error: Expected 'operator', ? found instead

Conditional expressions: The operand C is boolean while operands A and B are any
expressions. The result is of the same type as A and B.

(C ? A : B) if C then A else B

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I was also trying to minimize the processing of vectors, and executed the
following:

#declare f_Axis = function (Vector) {select (Vector, x, y, z)}

Which worked, but did not give me the expected results.
My debug statements with str complained that it expected a value, but a vector
was encountered instead, which leads me to believe that it was returning the
_vector_ quantities x, y, and z - which I thought functions couldn't do?

modifying/correcting to:

#declare f_Axis = function (x, y, z, Vector) {select (Vector, x, y, z)}

yielded the expected scalar world-coordinate, so that's an interesting pair of
results.

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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> I was also trying to minimize the processing of vectors, and executed the
> following:
>
> #declare f_Axis = function (Vector) {select (Vector, x, y, z)}
>
> Which worked, but did not give me the expected results.
> My debug statements with str complained that it expected a value, but a vector
> was encountered instead, which leads me to believe that it was returning the
> _vector_ quantities x, y, and z - which I thought functions couldn't do?
>
> modifying/correcting to:
>
> #declare f_Axis = function (x, y, z, Vector) {select (Vector, x, y, z)}
>
> yielded the expected scalar world-coordinate, so that's an interesting pair of
> results.


+1 to the addition of conditional in user-defined functions ! I also use select
as a replacement but as you say it would be much easier to use an explicit
condition.
Having no limitation of parameters to float values would also be very helpful.
Also, I found the equivalence x/u and y/v, the default x,y,z optional arguments,
or the fact they share the same name with the predefined vectors x,y,z, all very
confusing. It made me avoid the use of user-defined functions for a long time,
and even now I'm always a bit reluctant, trying to find workaround as much as
possible.
Hopefully a future version of Pov-ray will improve their usability.

Pascal

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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> I was also trying to minimize the processing of vectors, and executed the
> following:
>
> #declare f_Axis = function (Vector) {select (Vector, x, y, z)}
>
> Which worked, but did not give me the expected results.
> My debug statements with str complained that it expected a value, but a vector
> was encountered instead...
>

For your #debug, did you try just  str?  or   vstr (for vectors, to see what
would happen)? This is probably tangential to you're main concern, but it's
worth a try...

example...
#debug concat("\n","my vector = <",vstr(3,Vector,", ",0,5),">","\n")

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