Evaluation of complex conditions

[Bob Sneidar]

Right logical expressions are left to right. I may have been confused on the issue. There would be no advantage to doing it any other way so far as I can see. 

Bob


On Oct 6, 2011, at 2:13 PM, Pete wrote:

> Thanks Graham.  Yes, someone else provided an example of the function you
> mentioned to illustrate how things work.  But I cannot reproduce the
> behavior mentioned when conditions are enclosed in parens - the order of
> evaluation doesn't seem to be affected.
> 
> I wrote a couple of functions (condition1 and condition2), each of which
> puts its identity after a script variable named myResult then returns true.
> I then wrote the following:
> 
> put empty into myResult
> if condition1() is true and condition2() is true then put myResult
> 
> As expected, this displayed 12 in the message box.
> 
> Then I changed the if statement to :
> 
> if condition1() is true and (condition2() is true) then put myResult
> 
> The message box still ended up with 12 in it, not 21 as you would expect if
> the parens had any effect.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but it
> doesn't seem like parens have any effect on the order of evaluation.
> 
> Pete
> Molly's Revenge <http://www.mollysrevenge.com>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Graham Samuel <livfoss at mac.com> wrote:
> 
>> Yes, in any 'and' where the first condition is false, then the second
>> condition is not evaluated; similarly in any 'or', if the first condition is
>> true, the second isn't evaluated. Parentheses alter the order of evaluation
>> as others have said.
>> 
>> It's easy to prove this by writing a script where the thing generating your
>> condition ('a' in your example) is a function - you can then make the
>> function have a side effect. As sample function might be
>> 
>> function ReturnsTrue
>>  put "condition returning true has been invoked;" after whatHappened
>>  return true
>> end ReturnsTrue
>> 
>> you then write an 'if' statement which at some point in the logic calls
>> ReturnsTrue(), and when you look at the global 'whatHappened' you will see
>> whether the evaluation reached that point or not...
>> 
>> Graham
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 5 October 2011 16:25, Pete <pete at mollysrevenge.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> No, I mean:
>>> 
>>> If a is true then
>>> if (b is true or c is true) then
>>>    do whatever
>>> end if
>>> end if
>>> 
>>> I'm pretty sure if a was false, the second condition wouldn't be
>> evaluated.
>>> 
>>> But you raise an interesting point - in your example, does the condition
>>> inside the parens truly get evaluated first?
>>> 
>>> Pete
>>> Molly's Revenge <http://www.mollysrevenge.com>
>> 
>> 
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