Local Variables
- About Local Variables
- Reference Manual Entry
Local Variables Block allows you to define Local Variables in a nice Block format, instead of creating them in the Code Block.
For a quick explanation for those who are not familiar with the concept of a variable, variables are "memory slots" that do one thing: store a value. That's it.
Variable types in the Grid ecosystem are differentiated by how accessible they are by other parts of Grid.
Local Variables in the Grid ecosystem are such variables that are able to be accessed by only the Action Chain they are defined on, and exist for only the runtime of the Action Chain. It's a lot more limited than the other two types of variables, and it still has the two big limitations applying to it that are the basis of using variables in Grid. All variables within Grid are stored in a Page per Module basis, meaning that:
Variables created on a now inactive Page are not accessible on the currently active Page! Variables created on one module, are not accessible from other modules.
Local Variables are very useful for creating variables that are only needed by the Event and underlying Action Chain for functioning. For example the default Grid configurations use a good amount of these variables to store and use the values of various functions for UI Events.
One of these is the often used val
, which is usually defined as being equal to the controlelement_value()
function. This way, whenever a function or Block asks for the current value of the Control Element, you can just use val
Local Variable for this purpose instead of calling the above mentioned function each time. Doing this saves characters and makes configurations more structured.
In Grid syntax local variables have no prefix to them, same as global ones and they look like this: lvar=0
.
There is no Reference Manual Entry for this article.