Zugg Software :: View topic - Question about variables and math operations.

Beginner Joined: 30 May 2002 Posts: 25 Location: USA

I have a question about variables. If I have a list of numbers seperated by commas and I save it as a string variable, is there any way to break that variable apart into individual numerical variables? For instance, if I have the variable @numbers saved as "2, 4, 7, 5, 11, 2, 6", how can I make each of those numbers its own variable?

Or, a more direct example of what I'm trying to do:

I have two sets of three-dimensional coordinates, each in its own variable. These variables are in a format much like "(-30784375, 314030, 19872)". I would like to take these two variables and apply Pythagonrean's theorem to them to calculate the distance between the two points. So that's sq.rt.((x1 - x2)^2 + (y1 - y2)^2 (z1 - z2)^2). Is there any good way to do this within zMUD?

Wizard Joined: 15 Jan 2002 Posts: 1644 Location: USA

Blah Math *shudder*

this might be something what your looking for to get started seperating the numbers using the %word() function

#SAY #numbers
outputs 2, 4, 7........

#say %word(@numbers,1,", ")
outputs 2

#say %word(@numbers,2,", ")
outputs 4

Beginner Joined: 30 May 2002 Posts: 25 Location: USA

Actually, that works perfectly. Thanks! I had to play with some functions in order to get my equation to work out, but I got it eventually and it works fine, now.

MASTER Joined: 28 Nov 2000 Posts: 4817 Location: USA

This would be simpler if you used a list variable and even simpler than that with a record variable.

Comma-separated values (what you have)
#VAR CSV {-30784375, 314030, 19872}
#SAY The first number is %word( @CSV, 1, ", "), the second is %word( @CSV, 2, ", "), and the third is %word( @CSV, 3, ", ")

List variable
#VAR List {-30784375|314030|19872}
#SAY The first number is %item( @List, 1), the second is %item( @List, 2), and the third is %item( @List, 3)

Record variable
#VAR Record.x {-30784375};#VAR Record.y {314030};#VAR Record.z {19872}
#SAY The first number is @Record.x, the second is @Record.y, and the third is @Record.z

I think you can see that the third method is by far the simplest for use in calculations.

NOTE: Also see #ADDITEM and #ADDKEY