Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 11 - Expressions
4 The Home Control Assistant
This dialog lets you insert common things that you may want to work with. Things like the names
of the objects in your design, flags, and constants.
When you close the Expression Builder, the constructed expression is inserted into the text of the
element properties at the cursor. Or it replaces the current selection if there is one.
Managing Flags
An important point about flags is that they get created when expressions are evaluated. There is no
other way than that to create a flag. That is, there is no "new flag" wizard. When a program is
executed any new flags that are used in its expressions appear in the flags list in the flags inventory
dialog.
The flags inventory dialog is described in the chapter on design tools.
Other uses for expressions
In addition to using expressions in the Compute and Compute Test visual programmer elements,
you can place expressions in other elements. Just enclose the expression in %’s. When the
element is executed, the expression is evaluated and the result in text form replaces the % enclosed
section. For example, to show the value of an expression, use this text in the ShowMessage
element:
The value of beta is %beta1 + beta2%
If your string wants to display a percent sign, use two in the string:
Inside humidity is %humInside%%
These placeholders - % enclosed sections - can be used in these elements:
 Show Message in the text
 Run Program element in the command line
 Speak
 Change Icon
 Add to Log