"Michael Andrews" <M.C### [at] readingacuk> wrote in message
news:3C3### [at] readingacuk...
> Hi Tom,
>
> Well, it seems to be doing exactly as it should, to me.
>

Well, it's counter my experience with other scripting langs, where separate
line-reads do not affect each other, but it is fine.

My only reason for raising this is:

a) is this what was intended?
b) if so, could the docs be clarified?

<snip>

>
> So IMHO this works as given in the documentation (ss6.2.3.3).
>

The trouble with the doc. is that it only gives a one-line example (with no
comma at the end of the line, since it is not required with a one-line file).

IMHO if the following was added to the descrip:

Note that data read by the #read directive must have comma delimiters between
values [ (even when a newlines separates the values, with each line processed by
a separate call to #read) ]

things would be a little clearer.

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In article <3c3db3a9$1@news.povray.org> , "Tom Melly" <tom### [at] tomandlucouk>
wrote:

> Note that data read by the #read directive must have comma delimiters between
> values

I think it is really perfectly clear already.  It does not imply a newline
substitutes a comma in any way, nor does it suggest commas are optional.  To
the contrary, it says "must have", which could not be more obvious, at least
to me.

IMO the problems arise because you make some assumptions that it would work
like some other program despite the manual never saying it does and clearly
stating the opposite.  The manual cannot cover for the behavior of other
programs.  In this place it can only give a concise description of what
POV-Ray expects, and I think it does a good job.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
news:3c3dc4c7@news.povray.org...
>
> I think it is really perfectly clear already.  It does not imply a newline
> substitutes a comma in any way, nor does it suggest commas are optional.  To
> the contrary, it says "must have", which could not be more obvious, at least
> to me.
>

You misunderstand - it isn't that I think newlines should work as well as a
comma - rather that I expected #read to process each line as a separate
operation (and therefore not care whether the preceding line had a comma or
not).

> IMO the problems arise because you make some assumptions that it would work
> like some other program despite the manual never saying it does and clearly
> stating the opposite.  The manual cannot cover for the behavior of other
> programs.  In this place it can only give a concise description of what
> POV-Ray expects, and I think it does a good job.

It doesn't state the opposite - it makes no reference to multi-line i/o at all.
All the examples deal with a single line. Still, you are correct, I made an
assumption. If I am the only one likely to make such an assumption, then the
docs do not need clarification.

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