Am I dreaming? Named trigger flags in ME? Finally?

[cfrag]

I just saw this little tidbit on today's release note:

Quote

• ME. Allow text name for trigger flags.

Does that mean what I think it means?

Screw the Apache, this is even better (if true ) 

[dark_wood]

Exactly, this is the breaking news for mission builders

Thanks ED!

[Sedlo]

@cfragyou are not dreaming.

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by Sedlo

[Rudel_chw]

On 3/17/2022 at 4:03 PM, dark_wood said:

Exactly, this is the breaking news for mission builders

 

I'm now completing my first mission using exclusively named flags, I've enjoyed the change a lot, as the names help a lot to self-document the trigger logic.

However, just wanted to pass along the caveat that the flag name is case-sensitive, which can lead to some typos being difficult to catch.

For example, the flag "ADF tuned 2" is not the same as "ADF Tuned 2".

[hmleao]

Man, I need to read these changelogs more thoroughly. Always getting caught by surprise... Recently I almost fell of the chair to see that helicopters received a command that can be used for them to follow the carriers, now this one...

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

For example, the flag "ADF tuned 2" is not the same as "ADF Tuned 2".

I never understood the wisdom behind case-sensitive naming - it adds one more source of difficult to find errors. Mind you, this predates flag use in DCS, and was already an issue with programming languages a long time ago. Well-designed languages like Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon, Ada etc. are all case INsentitive, and a variable named 'foo' maps to the same variable named 'Foo' or 'FOO'. C and their ilk never did (being lazily cobbled together), allowing bad practices like using slightly differently cased but otherwise identically spelled strings for different purposes: "myClass myclass" legally defines the variable named "myclass" (all lower case) as a member of class "myClass" (spelled with capital C, everything else the same). Lua, unfortunately, hails from C, so this is also part of Luas language definition. ED could have internally made it simpler by converting all flags to lower or upper case, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed. A pity, as that would have been an easy QoL improvement during the design stage.

 

Edited May 9, 2022 by cfrag