Why use scopes?

[Magentix]

I looked into some people's spells and noticed they used scopes.

The obvious advantage would be the ability to use the same function names, but save for that, why would I use scopes?

Does it destroy some globals or something else that would increase performance?

 

[Rheias]

> Does it destroy some globals or something else that would increase performance?

No, it makes everything more organized and allows you to use privates (functions, globals, structs, other scopes inside it, etc.)

Imagine you want to use the function H2I. This is a very popular function (or at least was) putting it in scope would save the mapper needless function deleting.

 

[~GaLs~]

>>This is a very popular function (or at least was) putting it in scope would save the mapper needless function deleting.
Putting it in a scope are just useless...lol
You forgot to "private" it.

 

[Uberplayer]

>Putting it in a scope are just useless...lol.. You forgot to "private" it.
What do you mean? I think he did not: "..organized and allows you to use privates.."

 

[~GaLs~]

I think i got the wrong idea

 

[SFilip]

First of all one of the main goals of vJass is to make systems, things made by other people, easy to implement. Another is organization.
A (not so good) example would be that you make a could of spells that aren't MUI and use some globals for them. For example it would make sense to use globals such as caster (unit), target (unit or XY) etc.
Now obviously you can't have two variables with the same name. You could name these two "a" and "b" in spell one and "c" and "d" in spell two, but that would turn into a nightmare when it comes to modifying. You can also use something long like "global_MySpell1_caster", but thanks to scopes you can just make it private and call it caster as much as you like.
Furthermore why use
function MySpell1_actions takes nothing returns nothing
or
function MySpell1_timercallback takes nothing returns nothing
when you can simply have
public function Actions takes nothing returns nothing
and
public function TimerCallback takes nothing returns nothing
in all of your spells. Much easier to read, isn't it?

It's also awesome for common functions like H2I as already stated. What if someone wants to implement two systems with handle vars? Sure, someone who is adept at Jass can remove the function doubles, but a beginner might be confused on which functions to get rid of...

 

[TheDamien]

As a precompiler, vJass doesn't add any "real" functionality - all the features are there to make it easier for the map-maker to design and implement efficient code.

Like SFilip said, scopes make it easy to organize your code and also to add other peoples systems where the names of globals and functions may otherwise conflict.

 

[Magentix]

Thanks all, I got it now...


> public function Actions takes nothing returns nothing

I thought only privates "stayed within" the scope?

 

[SFilip]

"private" means that the function's name (and all calls to it within the scope) will be randomized.
"public" means that the function gets an underscore followed by the scope's name as a sufix (public Actions inside myscope becomes Actions_myscope).