Passing a flexible array of record as a parameter for a function

[Insectoid]

I'm working on a blackjack program, and I am using a record to hold my cards (suit, value, and image) and storing the 'cards' in the player's 'hand', which is a flexible array. Now, I have created a function to count the total value of the cards in any player's hand, and am passing it the hand of the player who's hand is being counted. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Is there a way around this?

[part of] My code:

Turing:

type card :     record         suit : string         num : int         image : int     end record var playerHand : flexible array 1 .. 0 of card %The cards in the player's hand function countCards (hand : array 2 .. * of card) : int     var numAces : int := 0     var cardCount : int := 0     for x : 2 .. upper (hand)         if (hand (x).num < 11 then             cardCount += hand (x).num         elsif hand (x).num = 14 then             cardCount += 1             numAces += 1         elsif hand (x).num >= 11 then             cardCount += 10         end if     end for     if cardCount <= 10 then         loop             exit when numAces = 0 or cardCount > 10             cardCount += 11             numAces -= 1         end loop     end if     result cardCount end countCards put countCards (playerHand)

[Clayton]

What you have does work, except for two little errors. One I'll give to you, the other I won't. You're missing a bracket in your if statement in the for loop in your function. Second, the bounds of the array being passed into the function must match exactly, with * being a wildcard, what's wrong with your parameter?

[Insectoid]

oops, that bracket was accidentally left over from when I was testing some other ways to do it.

As for the *, I was following your tutorial (Arrays), which said that it would allow the function to accept an array of unknown length. Seeing as I have no idea how big these arrays will be, I figured this was the way to go.

Clayton, for his array tutorial, wrote:

We can modify our procedure so that it takes an array of unknown length. To do this, when declaring the parameters to our procedure, we replace the upper bound with an asterisk (*).

[Clayton]

The asterisk is correct, which leaves what wrong if the bounds must be exactly the same?

[Insectoid]

oh crap, forgot that the hand arrays start at one..most of the other ones start at 2 (because decks don't have a '1' card (aces are labeled 14)). Well, now I feel stupid...

Thanks Clayton!