main
{
integer = 15;
real = 0.3;
negative = -35.356;
scientific = 7.5E+13;
...
}
main
{
astring = "Here is a test string";
...
}
As with C, LScript allows--and sometimes requires--you to "escape"
certain characters within your strings. Escaping a character
causes LScript to treat that character as a literal, as something
that is part of the string being defined and without special
meaning. To escape a character, use the back-slash character
(\) immediately before the character you wish LScript to process.For example, double quote marks typically indicate the beginning and ending of a defined string literal. What if you needed to include one or more double quotes in your string for display? The following LScript code line would generate nothing but errors:
quoteString = ""I don't like this", he said";LScript would interpret the first two double quote marks as beginning and ending of the string literal you are assigning to variable
quoteString, and then continue processing your
LScript starting with the first character in your intended
string. This is very bad.You need to instruct LScript to ignore the quote marks within the string as special characters, and this is accomplished by escaping them:
quoteString = "\"I don't like this\", he said";
Arrays can be created by several different methods. The first method simply declares the array, indicating the number of elements the array contains:
main
{
var check[15];
...
}
Declaring an array in this fashion causes each element within
the new array to be marked internally as "uninitialized." You
cannot utilize an element in such a state until you have
assigned a value to it. LScript will detect any attempt to access
uninitialized array elements--or variables, for that matter--and
generate an error message.However, single-dimension (or "linear") arrays need not be explicitly declared. LScript will allocate elements in a linear array "on-demand", meaning that elements in an array will be created as they are accessed. Multi-dimensional arrays, however, must still be explicitly declared using the var keyword.
Linear arrays are created automatically by the LScript interpreter as they are needed, or when the interpreter thinks they are needed. In the case of functions that return multiple items, unless you tell the interpreter explicitly how to handle the potential loss of data, it will create an array to house the returning data to prevent the destruction of returned data elements.
In the following example, the variabel 'firstItem' will be assigned an array of three elements, containing the return values from the parse() function:
...
firstItem = parse(" ","Hello there, everybody!");
...
You can explicitly override this automatic array creation behavior of
LScript's by employing an associative assignment of the returned
data:
...
(firstItem) = parse(" ","Hello there, everybody!");
...
Once arrays are declared, individual elements can be accessed
by referencing the array element directly. Array elements are
accessed in LScript starting at offset one (1), as in Pascal,
instead of zero (0), as in C or C++. Each LScript can use
as many arrays as it needs, limited only by your computer's
available memory.Any expression that will evaluate to a integer value can be used as an array index. For example,
randElement = points[random(1,size(points))];Entire LScript arrays can also be initialized in a single step from a single value by assigning that value to the array using an empty index:
main
{
var check[15];
...
check[] = -1; // populate all 15 elements with '-1'
...
}
Because individual array elements are initialized to 'nil' as they
are create by LScript, you can size an array and initialize all of
its elements to 'nil' in one fell swoop:
main
{
...
check[15] = nil; // create the array, and initialize all elements
...
}
main
{
apoint = <4.5,10,.03>;
...
}
Once declared, individual elements of the vector data type can
be accessed using the keywords x, y, and z. For
example:
main
{
apoint = <4.5,10,.03>;
++apoint.x;
--apoint.y;
if(apoint.x > 4)
...
}
A good use of this value is in initializing or resetting arrays. Initialization with this value avoids a potential run-time error that can be generated when accessing uninitialized array elements.
main
{
var check[15];
...
check[] = nil; // reset array values
...
}
You will probably want to initialize an array to nil when
dealing with LScript commands that have variable return values,
such as parse().