Topic: favorite autolisp functions

[Mark]

What are your two favorite autolisp functions and why?

[Ron Heigh]

My 2 favorite are:

1. DWG+-
-this routine only works in Single Drawing Mode
-it opens the next drawing in the directory if you press +
-it opens the previous drawing in the directory if you press -
-it saves if you edit
-it doesn't save if you zoom, pan or just look around
-this routine saves lots of time when scrubbing drawings that the checker has marked changes on.

2. ZoomLimits
-this routine will zoom to the current drawing limits
-this is good when you actually use limits to their potential
-allows you to save you layouts and notes outside the printable limits area.
-zooms to what will actually be printed for reference.

[Mark]

Sorry Ron, I meant built-in functions. i.e. ssget, getreal, etc. But that DWG+- sounds really useful.

[JohnK]

"defun"

*lamo!* If i were going to be serious, i would prolly say: "mapcar" and "while".

Cause lists are everything in lisp.

[SMadsen]

DEFUN and COND

Why? Because you said to only pick two

[whdjr]

Once I learned how to use mapcar (which I'm still learning) it beacame my favorite.  Also its ActiveX similar vlax-map-collection.

[JohnK]

Ohhh, Good one Stig! I wanna change one of my favorite to "cond" as well. (*sniff* I love that 'lil guy.)

[Keith™]

I'd have to say

SET and READ

Code: [Select]


(setq count 0)
(repeat 10
  (setq temp (getstring "\nEnter string: "))
  (set (read (strcat "string[" (rtos count 2 0) "]")) temp)
  (setq count (1+ count))
)


[CADaver]

COND
WHILE

[David Bethel]

(cond)
(foreach)
(tblnext) & (tblsearch)

-David

[dubb]

IM A NOOOB

I use i know SETQ and SETVAR and /n

[whdjr]

Code: [Select]


(repeat 10
  (setq count 0)
  (setq temp (getstring "\nEnter string: "))
  (set (read (strcat "string[" (rtos count 2 0) "]")) temp)
  (setq count (1+ count))
)


I might be missing something, but is this example right.  What's it supposed to do.  The set statement doesn't change the temp variable.

[Keith™]

What it does is emulate a C-style variable name in lisp and creates a pseudo array ...

In the above example, you will be prompted for 10 text entries, each one will be saved in a variable named string[0] through string[9] ..... of course there IS a problem I just noticed ... I corrected it in my example ....
Try pasting it into AutoCAD and test the value of string[0] though string[9]

[whdjr]

Ok.  I get it now.

[Mark]

Well I have to say IF and MAPCAR are my favorite two functions. To test my theory I looked at all the .lsp files in my 'working' dir. These are files that may or may not make it into production but I think a good idea of how I write my autolisp code.

These are the commands I used.

first we get a number of all the .lsp files

dir /b *.lsp | wc -l
    375 <-- output

then I use grep and a regex to seek out lines that contain '(if'

grep -e "^.*(if\>" *.lsp |wc -l
   3140 <-- output

That equates to an average 8 lines of '(if' per file.

'mapcar' isn't quite as abundant.

grep -e "^.*(mapcar\>" *.lsp |wc -l
    362 <-- output

But none the less that is still an average of 1 per .lsp file.