Re: Problems with createActionTo and arg types...

[Pietro Terna]

At 00.39 27/08/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Alex Lancaster wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Swarm folks,
>> 
>> I am trying to create a dynamic schedule using a createActionTo message.
>> 
>> The Swarm interface guide says that when creating an action to with one or
>> more arguments, the argument needs to be cast to the Objective C id type,
>> to whit:
>> 
>> [createActionTo: neurone message: M(receivePulse:) : (id) pulseAmplitude]
>> 
>> This seems fine if the type of the argument (i.e. pulseAmplitude in the
>> above e.g.) is an integer. But gcc won't allow compilation if the argument
>> is a float, with an error message to the effect "can't cast that arg to a
>> pointer". (I can send the exact code and error message if necessary).
>> 
>> Is this a known problem? If so, are there any workarounds? I really need my
>> arguments to be floats, as integers are far too coarse to represent the
>> variables in my model.
>> 
>> Any ideas?
>
>This might be a stupid suggestion, but what if you divided up the float
>into the mantissa and the exponent, and store both of these as integers
>(or long integers) and then pass them into the method as integers cast
>to ids, and then inside the method "reconvert" them back to floats?
>I know theres got to be a simplier way....
>
>Brad.

An other solution (the previous is not a stupid suggestion; my attempt, may
be ...):

to have pulseAmplitude in an object; to transfer to neurone the address of
that object, which have to reply to a method like givePulseAmplitude when
is accessed by neurone;

i.e. to replace

[createActionTo: neurone message: M(receivePulse:) : (id) pulseAmplitude];

with something like

[createActionTo: neurone message: M(keepPulseFrom:) :
anObjectContainingPulseAmplitude];

Yours, Pietro



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