@PB, the benevolent programmer

I'm trying to teach myself how to write expressions in Maya/with mel script. Mel script is pretty much a dumbed down version of C. I took programming in high school and know the basic data structures and thought I would be fine... UNTIL I SAW THIS:



WTFITS?!?!

In exchange for answer, here's a girl I'd cheat on Hermione with.

Ah, the ol' Balloon,scaleY = (time < 2) ? time / 2: time * 2; gag. Generally this is indicative that a perpendicularly oriented pizza box monitor holder gave way and it fell on your face. At least that is what it ended up being the last 3 times I saw it.

Bitch might be hot if she didn't have a slutty ass nose ring.

Comotosis wrote:

Bitch might be hot if she didn't have a slutty ass nose ring.

You're just jealous because she's more tauren than you.

Besides, metal in limited quantities is more hot than you can fathom.

Comotosis wrote:

Bitch might be hot if she didn't have a slutty ass nose ring.

Seconded

I don't know your language but if it's like C/C++/C#, then that is the only tertiary operator in the language (eg it takes three operands). In truth, it's just a fancy if/else statement.

Basically you can read it like this:

if X ? then Y : else Z

You evaluate the statement before the question mark. It must be boolean (true or false result). Then, if it evaluates to true, you do the thing on the left side of the colon. If it's false, you do the thing on the right side.

So it just assigns to the Ballon.scaleY property either time divided by 2 or time multiplied by two, dependent upon if time is less than 2.

You can just rewrite it like this:

if (time < 2)
Ballon.scaleY = time / 2;
else
Ballon.scaleY = time * 2;

Don't let it scare you. I don't know the purpose for it other than to write an if/else statement in one compact line.

So.... They break the readability of having bracketed statements that let me make these "pretty tab trees" to make an if-else statement in one line? They can die in a fire.... I never learned what an "?" might be in high school programming =/

Well I suppose it may look like that for you, but it's actually a very concise way to write something that would normally take four to seven lines.

Most verbose

Code:

if (condition)
{
statement
}
else
{
statement
}

Least verbose

Code:

if (condition)
statement
else
statement

You probably should remember that the operator is used pretty much for conditional assignments because all extra code is extra typing for lazy programmers. Look at it this way.

Code:

if (time < 2)
Ballon.scaleY = time/2;
else
Balloon.scaleY = time*2;

Note how you had to write Ballon.scaleY twice. The ternary operator allows you instead to write it once and then just have the right side of the operator show you what the ultimate assignment will be.

I still like my tab trees =/
Aesthetics > shortness

Also, I lol'd when I found out "Expressions 2: Advanced expressions" is pretty much *gasp* BOOLEAN OPERATORS, IF STATEMENTS AND WHILE/FOR LOOPS!!!

I may be an art student but that's pretty down on the doesn't-need-brain-matter category. Even a huntard can do it.

Conditional statements and loops are pretty basic in terms of programming. Pointers are a lot harder concept (assuming you work in unmanaged code environments like most universities).

Really though, the complexity of programming is that

1) it's not very hard to make the computer take some input, mess with it, and give you some output
2) it IS very hard to do it in a manageable, maintainable, flexible, user-friendly way