addedValues Plugin

Multiple Value?

Normally variables are single valued, or scalars. This means that if you ask for the subject of a message, for example, you expect to see one string. Similarly the price of an article in a shop, is one numeric value. But in that same shop each article might come in different colours, so if you ask for the colour of an article the answer might be a list such as Red, Green or Blue. Colour is said to be Multiple Valued. addedValues can tell you the 2nd colour value, which is written Colour[2]. But the list of colours might be dynamic, if the store runs out of Green articles it could delete Green from the list. Now Colour[2] is Blue. If Blue is also deleted Colour[2] doesn't exist, and an error is flagged if you try to access it. The notation [2] is called subscripting, and the number 2, the subscript. In the simplest type of multiple valued variable, the list is maintained in no particular order, and the variable has an unordered multiple value. No duplicates are permitted in an unordered list. You can limit the maximum number of values.