A heartfelt thank you to Henri for making it happen.

1. Obviously no frivilous posting (and I imagine Martijn has special access to delete off-topic posts ?]

2. One UDF per post ?

3. Should we devise a standard description banner for UDF scripts (I think CJ came up with one) here's a scriptlogic example:

quote:

---

Action
Returns a verbose representation of a specific date. Example: "April 1st, 2001".

Syntax
VERBOSEDATE ("date")

Parameters
Date must be in the form of "YYYY/MM/DD"

Remarks
Easily internationalized, simply by manipulating
the elements of the $MonthNames array within the function.

Returns
A verbose representation (string) of the date passed to this function.

Dependencies
Ordinal( )

Example
?"Good day, Welcome to the ACME Network."
?"Today is "+verbosedate(@Date)


Source

[the code]

---

4. Constructive critizisms allowed and Author ammendments reposted to first post in thread ?

I'm sure there's more informal guidelines we can all follow - any thoughts gentlemen ?

5. Do we need a standard post topic format -like :

UDF: DateMath() - Does some funky date math

-Shawn

[ 08 November 2001: Message edited by: Shawn ]

We should probably have had a discussion about standards before opening this up. Things like:

• UDF Naming
  
• Documentation
  
• Variable names
  
• Function calling conventions
  
• Variable scope rules

A common format would make UDFs easier to understand, especially with the diversity of nationalities on this board.

We should also think about the etiquette of this forum, as it should probably be less informal than the existing ones. This forum should contain finished UDFs and nothing else. See, I've already breached the etiquette with this post

There are other problems, like dealing with comments, requests for improvements, bug fixes and removing / updating obsolete versions.

All-in-all a big task.

-Shawn

goes something like this (sample from DeltaTime())

code:

---

;FUNCTION         DeltaTime()
;
;AUTHOR           Jochen Polster (jochen.polster@gmx.net)
;
;ACTION           Calculates the time difference between two given times
;
;SYNTAX           DeltaTime(Start,End)
;
;PARAMETERS       Start (Required)
;                  -  String value representing the starttime
;                     Format hh:mm:ss[:ms]
;
;                 End (Required)
;                  -  String value representing the ending time
;                     Format hh:mm:ss[:ms]
;
;REMARKS          Highest possible delta Value is 23:59:59:999 !
;                 If the diff gets higher , the result will be incorrect.
;
;RETURNS          The difference between Start - and Endtime in 'hh:mm:ss[:ms]'
;
;DEPENDENCIES     None
;
;EXAMPLES         call "PATH\DeltaTime.udf"
;                 $start = @time + ':' + @msecs
;                 for $i = 0 to 15000
;                 	$ = @scriptdir
;                 next
;                 $end = @time + ':' + @msecs
;                 ? 'Start time  : $start' ?
;                 ? 'End time    : $end' ?
;                 $Duration = DeltaTime($start,$end)
;                 ? 'Duration    : $Duration' ? ?
;
;                 $start = "21:59:59" ? 'Backup Started  : $start' ?
;                 $end   = "01:00:01" ? 'Backup Ended    : $end' ?
;                 $d = DeltaTime($start,$end)
;                 ? 'Backup Duration : $d' ?
;
;                 get $k

---

Plus we should have an udf-internal-variables convention , maybe just like Richard once used :

udf internal starts with $__ or something like that

J.

_________________________

All information passed back out from a UDF should be passed via the return variable (UDF name).

This way the internal workings of UDF can not interfere with the calling script, no matter what variable names were used.

Bryce

So we can place the rules and guidelines of this forum always at the top.

Think of how the DIR() funcion works. The logic of the function needs to retain state information so that subsequent calls return the next value. Local variables are destroyed and so are not usable in that context.

Ruud has said that there will be static variables which will perform the task but these are not there yet.

You may also need variables which need to be visible between UDFs which make up a function library. Again, these need to be global, at least within the file that the functions are defined.

Bryce

Bryce : Ubb has this feature (Sticky : topic) , only for moderator.
And need to see if the version on kixtart.org have it

Anyway, good luck to MartijnL, he will really need it

Off-Topic : Shawn, did you receive my latest mail about KixWinVB ? I used your provide address on your kix-profile, but as your are also consultant, i hope i was good when i send it to you

For now, I'm going to study , cause saturday I have an exam about databases.

1. Posted UDF's should be wrapped in [code][/code] tags

2. To download UDF's, cut and paste the lines between code: tags into MS Write (WordPad) and save as textfile with a .kix extention ...

You get what I mean - point being that lot's of folks (myself included) haven't quite got this download script thingy (with perserved formatting) nailed just yet ... has anybody worked-out a fool proof method ?

-Shawn

[ 08 November 2001: Message edited by: Shawn ]

The ability to store UDF's as a plain text file would be a very nice thing.

This is why, if i can, i give a link to the UDF stored on my personal site, for easy download.

Bryce

I think Jochen or CJ posted that, I can't remember now who it was, but it works great.

Yes, it would be nice if UBB had other options though. I'm sure not everyone has MS Word

I changed "Dependancies" to "Requires" because "Dependancies" is too long. It was stuffing up my margins in my Doc. I haven't released said doc yet either.

I will watch this forum and start posting some UDFs soon. I might have to tweak them for RC3/4 though.

As for the DIR thing, I would suggest that someone make a UDF that does a full dir and returns an array with the information. Perhaps a 2D array with file size, time, date etc etc...

cj

$files = dir()

for each $file in $files
? $file.name
? $file.size
...
next

Bryce

[ 09 November 2001: Message edited by: Bryce ]

When you have a new UDF, post it to the normal forum (scripts) with a title of
"[UDF] Announce: Bread Slicing function"
It can then go through the usual peer review, testing, bug fixing etc.

When it becomes completely stable, mail Martijnl and ask him to promote it to the UDF forum. At this point he can check that the standards have been adhered to and post it to this forum. Perhaps we can find him some disk space somewhere where he can store a disk version and create a reference link.

That way you'd keep all the noise out of the forum.