Re: Oddball Event Handling (Longer than it Ought to Be)

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Craig Markwardt (craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu) writes:

> Thanks for the cool description of you project.
> 
> Now, prepare to be lightly toasted :-)
> 
> > FUNCTION FindTLB, startID
> > 
> > ; This function traces up the widget hierarchy to find the top-level base.
> > 
> > FORWARD_FUNCTION FindTLB
> > parent = Widget_Info(startID, /Parent)
> > IF parent EQ 0 THEN RETURN, startID ELSE parent = FindTLB(parent)
> > RETURN, parent
> > END
> 
> I have no problem with recursion.  In this case however it's not
> really needed.  For the book larnin' types, this is known as tail
> recursion I believe, which is often easily optimized.  I admit
> recursion may help you conceptualize what's going on though.  Wouldn't
> the following code do the same thing?
> 
> parent = startid
> while widget_info(parent, /parent) NE 0 do $
>   parent = widget_info(parent, /parent)

Oh, sure, it would *work*. But how you gonna give
something like that away? :-)

Apparently I didn't make it clear that I wasn't
looking for criticism of my exciting new program,
but I have to admit I fooled around for a few 
minutes trying to get a WHILE loop to work. But
after becoming confused I just wandered around in
the wilderness for a while, making a change here,
and another change there for no apparent rational
reason (you know, how you do when you are improvising)
and all of a sudden, BLAM, something worked. 

In my personal programming myth, if something works
it is clearly the most highly optimised solution. 
But thanks for your suggestion. :-)

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
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