About the 7000 years of running

mauro · 18 January 2019 16:53

The following code is auto-generated (towards the end of the created file) from Cabbage when you create a new instrument:

<CsScore>
;causes Csound to run for about 7000 years...
f0 z
</CsScore>
</CsoundSynthesizer>

From the description in the Csound reference manual, and from the Csound source code itself:

github.com

csound/csound/blob/6a5c2c5d3352631aa5c8bd4a221e333af7fee9eb/Engine/sread.c#L1246


    *p++ = SP;
    STA(nxp) = p;                            /*  add blank      */
    return(1);                              /*  and report ok  */
}


MYFLT stof(CSOUND *csound, char s[])            /* convert string to MYFLT  */
                                    /* (assumes no white space at beginning */
{                                   /*      but a blank or nl at end)       */
    char    *p;
    MYFLT   x = (MYFLT) cs_strtod(s, &p);
    if (*p=='z') return FL(800000000000.0); /* 25367 years */
    if (UNLIKELY(s == p || !(*p == '\0' || isspace(*p)))) {
      csound->Message(csound, Str("sread: illegal number format:  "));
      p = s;
      while (!(*p == '\0' || isspace(*p))) {
        csound->Message(csound, "%c", *p);
        *p++ = '0';
      }
      csound->Message(csound,Str("   zero substituted.\n"));
      print_input_backtrace(csound, 1, csoundMessage);
      return FL(0.0);

you can see that the ‘z’ token makes your instrument run for 25367 years, not 7000 years.

Anyway, it’s not very important what that value is set to… I doubt someone could care if theorically Csound could run for 7000 or 25367 years without interruptions. I think the true meaning of the ‘z’ token is to make a Csound instance run until you stop it manually. So, I think it should be better if Cabbage generated a comment like this:

<CsScore>
;causes Csound to run until manually stopped:
f0 z
</CsScore>
</CsoundSynthesizer>

P.S.: if you are wondering, yes, these are those types of problem that don’t make me sleep at night…

rorywalsh · 21 January 2019 12:14

I’m happy to change that!